Air in the Shape of a Man

I don't think it will ever
slide its way in, but I'll
extract the doorknobs out of

their sockets, unhang the doors
from their hinges. It's the monks
I love, the monks who torch their

own calm postures,
for desire, for aspen, for protest at
the erratic public squares

they envy, because that sort
of emolument, the burning up
of hand-dyed cotton, making ash of it—

we both want to be fired to a fine silt
and just pass into—There are
a great many ways to vanish—

a knife kick through the surface,
a stuttering shift sideways,
a four-quartered tear, an inwardly

diminishing spiral—but this,
my leaking into, seems an apter glory-hole.
I hope to achieve a letting out

of the many-jointed sofa bed and the fuel
injection manifold. I may not be
able to manage, I may undo every

thing. And the lovers I am relying on
to cremate what remains may, even knowing
how I loathe the squelch of clay &

gravel earth, not think me
gone, and harbor me on into
an afterwards I shudder at tonight.

This poem first appeared in The Diagram 4.5.