You know how hard it is sometimes just to walk on the streets

Downtown, how everything enters you—

Iron straight from the forge, fierce with tiny agitation,

Rain ringing like teeth in the beggar’s tin,

Like a sinking ship drowning its lights,

Chalk beds       trilobites       giant ferns

Whirr. The invisible sponsored again by white

Isotopes, pockets, dragonflies, bread:

There is no dictionary for this gathering.

You might think you were Noah

Failing to arrange a taxonomy of allergic substances.

Our lives are like birds’ lives, flying around, blown away,

Or some far horn repeating over water—

Do we simply join our arcs

The way a seed is pressed into a hole?

Don’t ask me any questions, I’ve seen how things

Blink-quick, or quicker still,  

Tracked under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

Follow the light, the twist and drop of blackbirds from the tree.


*This poem is a cento that borrows lines from the following poems written by the following poets: 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Thing Itself is taken from the title of the poem “Not Ideas About The Thing 
But The Thing Itself” by Wallace Stevens.

You know how hard it is sometimes just to walk in the streets / Downtown, how 
everything enters you is line 1 from “Quantum,” written by Kim Addonizio, 
published in Tell Me, BOA Editions, Ltd.: Rochester, 2000.

Iron straight from the forge, fierce with tiny agitation is line 1 from “Life Near 
310 Kelvin,” written by Greg Keith, published in Life near 310 Kelvin, SLG 
Books: Berkeley, Hong Kong, 1998.

Rain ringing like teeth in the beggar’s tin is line 7 from “The City In Which I 
Love You,” written by Li-Young Lee, published in The City in Which I Love You, 
BOA Editions, Ltd.: Brockport, New York, 1990.

Like a sinking ship drowning its lights is line 57 from Altazor, “Canto I, excerpt,” 
written by Vincente Huidobro, published in Poems for the Millennium, Vol. I, 
University of California Press: London, 1995.

Chalk beds    trilobites    giant ferns is line 4 from “The Fetus’ Curious 
Monologue,” written by Amy Gerstler, published in Ghost Girl, Penguin Books: 
London, 2004.

Whirr. The invisible sponsored again by white is line 1 from “In The Hotel,” 
written by Jorie Graham, published in The Best American Poetry 1994, Simon & 
Schuster: New York, 1994.

Isotopes, pockets, dragonflies, bread is lines 5 from “Crycek: The Confessions,” 
written by Susan Wheeler, published in The American Poetry Review, Vol. 28/No. 
2: March/April 1999.

There is no Dictionary for this gathering is line 93 from “Draft 55: Quiptych,” 
written by Rachelle Blau DuPlessis, published in The Best American Poetry 2004, 
Scribner: New York, 2004.

You might think you were Noah is line 23 from “Nazareth By Rail,” written by 
Matthew Niblock, published in Scream When You Burn, Incommunicado Press: 
San Diego, 1998.

Failing to arrange a taxonomy of allergic substances is line 21 from “Flower,” 
written by Chris Gordon, published in Scream When You Burn, Incommunicado 
Press: San Diego, 1998.

Our lives are like birds’ lives, flying around blown away is line 31 from “Drone 
and Ostinato,” written by Charles Wright, published in Negative Blue, Farrar, 
Straus and Giroux: New York, 2000.

Or some far horn repeating over water is line 9 from “Nostalgia of the 
Lakefronts,” written by Donald Justice, published in The Best of the Best 
American Poetry, Scribner: New York, 1998.

Do we simply join our arcs is from line 55 from “Midway,” written by Gabriel 
Spera, published in The Standing Wave, Perennial (HarperCollins): New York, 
2003.

The way a seed is pressed into a hole is line 11 from “Prayer,” written by Kim 
Addonizio, published in Tell Me, BOA Editions, Ltd.: Rochester, 2000. 

Don’t ask me any questions, I’ve seen how things is line 18 from “1910 
(Intermezzo),” written by Frederico Garcia Lorca, published in Poet in New York, 
Noonday Press: New York, 1994.

Blink-quick or quicker still is from line 2 of “Thinking,” written by Matt Rader, 
published in Grain Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 2: Saskatchewan, 2003.

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn is line 61 of “The Waste Land,” I. The 
Burial of the Dead, written by T.S. Elliot.

Follow the light, the twist and drop of blackbirds from the tree is line 9 from “So 
Here by my Harangue to God,” written by Jim Nason, published by Grain 
Magazine, Vol. 30, No. 3: Saskatchewan, 2003.