Empirical Thatness

Painting by Fabian Perez


EMPIRICAL THATNESS

It was loud, boisterous, inside me, in my neural
Networks;
It was loud, loud,

This unknowing,
Loud in my inwardness, although outwardly I was
Quasi-silent in her voluptuous presence.

This unknowing of mine, my structure, my post-
Structure,

Sounded like a car motor inside me, a car
Motor
That has not yet recovered from its operation
In a charity hospital, an operation

Performed in an amphitheatre by interns.

Its clauses were becoming phrases, but it dreamed
Of becoming a sentence, and if possible a paragraph.

I looked at the flesh of her arm, blonde flesh,
Sparsely freckled, it became an echo.

She said: “Wallace Stevens is my favorite poet
Of the twentieth century. His sounds changed my conscious-
Ness.”

Her white gold hair was a garden of the
Unspoken, the unspeakable, the un-
Thought, the un-
Thinkable.”

Her hazel eyes were staring at the un-
Dulations of my history.

She asked me in her soft, low erotic voice
“If I has ever aspired to be a saint
Or metaphysician.”

I said, “I did not know.”

“Are you like the uneducated and against

Dostoevsky.”

I said, “I don’t know.”

She paused, sipped some white wine,
And then asked,

“Have you ever thought of becoming
A monk, and tying yourself to the cross
As did Magdalene of Pazzi.”

I said, “I don’t know.”

-

Duane Locke

Posted over on The Sound of Poetry Review