Laurie Doctor, from her Sketchbook
(Quoting ‘Every Riven Thing,’ Christian Wiman)
[box of light w/John Donne in it] [& a circuit board] [& a boy]
“So let us melt, and make no noise”
John Donne, “Valediction Forbidding Mourning”
—sometimes I am so enthralled awaiting my beloved I am gold to airy
thinness beat & sometimes I am just a circuit board in the hands
of a boy // what has been coughed up here // Hong Kong // edge
of Africa // devoid of any keystroke // until I am undissolved //
burned into the ground // no aqua regia // royal water // to cull
the precious metal // my dying—skin & bone—just one last
glorious piss—puddle & slosh—twist of wire—mangled floss—
somebody weeping because I was cherished // —O boy //
eating rice by the fire // are you the fixed foot I keep
obliquely running from // all my fevered fetished searches
shouting out the names of God seeded somewhere in the clouds
until I am born again w/updates // a new machine // & can carve—
I shall end now where I had begun—another singularity in data
_____________________
Dennis Hinrichsen