At some point in 1861, the poet began
connecting the letters in the word the
as one continuous line
without moving her pen from the page
and the world ended
I’m reading The Master Letters
from a PDF Samantha sent me
and curious about the stray marks in the left margin
of the editor’s introduction, I zoom in—opening a space
between thumb and forefinger
as if releasing a gothic particle into emptiness, or examining
with a combination of adoration
and disgust, the thread
of some tacky bodily substance
stretching out between two points
—only to realize the shapes
I thought were annotations
are the fingertips of my friend, light moons
(barely there) on page 8, then absent
on 9, but on 10 I can make out
her lovely fingernails
The slight torque of her ring finger suggests
how she pressed the binding down into the glass
to ensure a clear copy, something I often do
sweating in an office
or cramped adjunct rest area
fighting a large overheating machine
that seems destined to outwit me
toward a kind of clarity and order. It’s summer now
so I’m not teaching, and we never did discuss
those letters in class, as I’d assigned too much reading
a rookie habit I’ve never outgrown
The air is a fertile and moving liquid
I’m walking home
and the white lilies are opening
like fists inside the night
I can’t look them in the center, the eye
because as you may know
you put something live in me, a hot wire
and when I admit it’s there
everything will end. In the third letter
the poet’s God-given heart
grows too big with love, she likens it
to a fetus outgrowing the womb
of his “little mother,” or a child
growing too large to carry. On page 36
is Sam’s thumb
inclining towards the word timbrel
It beats inside the line
written in summer
in ink, revised in pencil
in the first weeks of Civil War
I think of my friend tending
to her many alien houseplants
To be cared for like that
in the uncertainty
an end that announces itself
over and over
into our present. There’s one
that looks like little chains of pills
and a rubber tree that is always fighting off death
at the edges of her leaves. One resembles a heart
or a pineapple, just squatting there
on the earth like we all do
The sky slanting in through the glass
of her cinema window. Her index
finger testing the soil
for saturation or drought
pressing down
creating its likeness
through displacement
How strong when weak
to recollect, and easy
quite, to love. The white pulp
of the screen blinks through me
Ignoring all the signs, I go
inside. I do the things I have chosen
in the lack. The amber
and green glasses in the rack
aren’t quite dry, but I return them
anyway, upside down
to their very own places
to trap this meanwhile
in which you never arrive
The water pools
at every mouth
to make a little ring