if I wake up just as you’re wrapping up your monologue
with a moaning mutter, a growl from below my tongue
that sets my toes and fingers trembling, my hand,
leg,
epileptic apoplectic slapping against the floor,
flailing
and beating like this skin itself is the leather,
the rope
that snaps, beating the floor, oscillating,
striking hard
enough to lift me into the air and slam me down
again,
dropping books and crushing crystal glasses,
ignorant,
tectonic, concussive, liver, intestine, spleen,
gall—and
my lungs’ volume now screeched up to a deep scream,
Richter register violence knocking my self into a
pulp—
and gone—like hot wind stealing away a piece of
paper
on which is written the news, will you fetch it and
read?
