dimensions you look up but you don’t see it the
ghost swooping into the past & future the present’s
so rarely here in my hands the washed-out yellow & purple
twilight that lasts forever in early July
a caquelon first rubbed
with a garlic clove then melting raclette I
want to ask everyone what they want in this poem I can’t
it’s all up to me now the heat lightning the crusts of
bread the swallows zigzagging twoard every cardinal
point the poems
I wrote & may write & haven’t written & won’t the
words you speak when you’re standing outside yourself &
wonder why all the while
dipping between dimensions the pale
purple twilight melts into the space-time continuum
just another Star Trek: the Next Generation episode the USS
Enterprise suddenly shifting at light speeds into the wrong place at
the right time or vice-versa—this happens all the time
the consistent heat that keeps the cheese from burning
it could be Gruyère stirred constantly the ghostly twilight yellow
melting—tinges of purple—it could be raclette the white sky
overhead awash with curlews you can’t see I want to ask everyone
what comes next in this poem it’s up to me of course—the words
you regret—the words we don’t say of course we mean them so
urgently we say something else a joke perhaps dipping into
the past the future present’s so rarely here—the natural sustain
of an archtop acoustic’s low E string humming for seconds &
seconds until you damp it
by accident the curlew dipping
between the Gruyère & raclette patches of sky it’s call
melting into the poems I won’t write
in this pale purple twilight
at some point I’ve held everything in my hands at some points
I’ve held nothing why can’t I ask everyone what they want in this
poem a thin crust of toasted cheese—not burnt—what remains
the sky as purple as a bruise in the east—There was a
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode like this