that the mundane might offer with its lines
what sighs beneath the surface, even there,

Still, some shadings of the face persist
a capsule of that day that she'd been glad

No single excess, nothing jerrybuilt
or squandered in a fit of thriftlessness
accounts for what we've ended with. Despite

When a man threw his fist into a wall next to my eye
I said that was love, that love was rage. 
I was in the habit of loving anyone who laid a cold hand

When I was five, my grandfather took me to the tomb
                of King Suro, lifted me over the stone fences

                and watched me slide down the mound over 

This is you as a boy.
Your back is to the camera.
You are standing above the beach

To spectate
is a verb
that does not

as if         you were ever wide-eyed enough to believe in urban legends
as if         these plot elements weren’t the stalest of clichés: the secret lab, the 
        anaerobic chamber, the gloved hand ex machina, the chemical-
        infused fog

For instance, this lushly verdant plain. Imagine it dialed back to featurelessness, each spiraling stalk retracted, each filigree rosette slow-blinking shut.

        crown of infrared
        song of drifting dune