He knew, he said, he was dying when for two straight weeks he dreamed of trying to switch on a swing-arm lamp that wouldn’t switch on. In baths I’ve never gone—as they do in the movies, to demonstrate crux and contemplation— totally under the water, but if I did, I would ponder the woman flooring it into the cinderblock wall from fifty feet away. I don’t think that image comes from the movies. I think it comes from the future. The future, with its color palette of airport whites and its unrushed glance, its involuted beckoning. I see it. I can see it. At least somebody wants me.
This poem is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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