Devil’s Lake

The first thing to arrive

in the new apartment,

even before us, is light.

The second is also light

and the third is a chunk

of that great solidity, sleep,

which is the result of light—

light’s passing yielding it.

To rest better I remove my eyes,

slip a bone from my jaw,

and swallow it. It dissolves

and I sleep, and I don’t.

I find a robin egg, set it in

the bathroom mirror

until it petrifies

and swallow that too.

Sleep seems to me to be

a certain breed of consumption—

unrelenting, sated

as often as it arises.

Forty, hot minutes of doors at the ends of cars

slamming open like mouths with a grinding shout

then closing, or not, the small human flame

passing through to the next car like it’s Pentecost

and each car is a disciple which it is—

a follower of the car before and the one after

following and the one after and the one after.

The ghost we will sublet from keeps rescheduling

the meeting when we will mark a sheet

saying we will give what must be given to take up space,

that we will give what is asked of us.

Dusk black emerald dome

in the woods where my parents lived—

needle planetarium of dazzle orchids.

After being raised in church,

after leaving,

I am still

a rapture stalker—

blackberry blackberry blackberry smog.

Our holy ghost ferries milk

in used-to-be-sand bottles

to the over-lit threshold.

I sleep with the milkman

—spear—rood—river—

so many ways to heat blood.