After Xime Silva & Emily Pittinos

    With a line from A Cloud of Drench Bearing Down

 

My neck wrapped up       in tattered 

      yellow tape at the scene, it doesn’t 

                matter how I got here. This is how 

 

it happens. The wantless 

      follow you in the park 

                at dusk. Bushes are a crumbling 

 

type       of beige, sunflowers still

      barely hanging on. Zoom in here: 

                there’s a tree that grows in south 

 

central Florida in saltwater that sucks

      all the salt into one leaf at a time. 

                Watch it turn yellow then beige and break 

 

off. It picks a new leaf 

      and moves on. To kill       small 

                parts of you so the rest keeps 

 

living. To wither. To rot. 

      I’m picking and falling 

                and dying and picking again, 

 

perpetual motion     machine like, beverly 

      clock like, float belt like. I am drowning 

                the shadows. The elms take 

 

and take and take, whatever 

      daylight is left is always 

                theirs. I wish I could be greedy. 

 

The scent of grass       between lips 

      and teeth. Tongue and throat 

                yellow in time. Sometimes 

 

I wonder if I was meant to be a leaf 

      or a lilypad and someone out there 

                fucked up the making of me. 

 

The shrieking, piercing having 

      of it, halving     of it, the bloodhound 

                with my human bone I passed in the park 

 

that night. The empty     stomach, 

          the starving and drying. The yellowing 

                welcome center. The moon      climbing 

 

its clouds. Of course       I was lying. 

      We all were, and maybe that makes us 

                bad people, but isn’t man evil 

 

and I was supposed to be a leaf 

      anyway. How do you define       what makes

                a dead thing       dead. The faded yellow