Charles Borkhuis
TRACE ELEMENTS
1
little tremble
sit beside me
in the vast and cloistered
in the veiled word
angling under flesh
whose flesh
might wriggle off the hook
and crawl back inside its hole
inside the labyrinthine ear
what I thought I’d heard
in the shutter-clap and worn hinge-rattle
come to finger the insatiable
what the cat dragged in
that I might try in vain
to explain the universe
to a dying vole
look here
the tall grasses
there the convulsive sun
hanging from a branch
2
explain till you have explained away
all explanation
swept the subject under the rug
except for the silence
between things
deafening to the point
of exhaustion
eliciting another
poorly chosen not that
no conclusion but correction
steeped upon correction
what heart could stop
uncertainty by simply
ceasing to beat
3
fall forward
in a moment’s suspension
have we ever moved
from this patch of dirt
a twitch in time called the rub
o distant learner
double-agent in the crawlspace
under the tongue
click a code
so the words know
which self is knocking at the door
and which is burrowing
through the earth
at the limits of control
one goes
the other stays
as if nothing had happened
in the exchange
of heads
4
take this hand
the one you cannot read
stations of the sentence
where the noun prostrates itself
before the verb
for deeper clarification
intimate knowledge
of the imaginary
upon a branch breaks
in a far-off womb
progeny further exposed
as the second splits
and the forked fragment
wriggles both ways
those who dwell in fact
may eventually hear
evening steps fill the room
falling into a childish downpour
these feet from nowhere
climbing over my head
and shoulders as the doorknob
turns to speak
5
let’s say a keyhole in sleep
a silhouette adrift dark skirt
in a bell ringing over distant hills
and branching brain away
old skeleton-moon on your right
mouth agape calling flies home
once animal in the hole
with the others
blind to suck
a little light and tremble
words caked in spittle
stir the day
quicksand the night
I only need a few to coax
a little life from this chronic
“yes” and “no”
correction
to shake some space between the bones
to dead-awaken
these stars
this sand
reversible at a moment’s notice
6
static in whose ecstasy
invites the chaos in
when metaphors collide
I see sparks from a distant alphabet
come crawling
infant on my tongue
a facial tick
keeps time to every syllable
the marked one
picked up and put down
the back of the wind
on a fence climbing
the stone in the meadow
picked up and put down
there remains
approximate
to the distance halved
forever ending
the sky above
off tune
slightly
7
out of another time
another mouth moving
inside this one
say “I” once more
and the door will shut
forever
“but who can live
wordless” asks the vole
step away from the mirror
remove those reading glasses
you’re becoming all too human
but words want to claim us
as their own
stop shaking
and draw the silver string
from your animal eye
to the evergreen in the distance
perhaps I have failed you
in anthropomorphic oversight
or am I not listening
close enough
8
I know you must
hear the inevitable crunch
of little teeth in the background
getting closer
the sun and stars never appear
in the same breath
but now you see them
crossing
is this the buried sky
the world eating itself
word by word
or simply language
stretched over everything
in a sticky embrace
9
the one who lives
in terminal stutter
the correction to all
and every last
conviction come to this
words will fail us in the end
I have no doubt
corporeal weightlessness
in the tremor
night terrors
riding on the whim
of a changing wind
pivot on a pronoun
that turns away
from the finished sentence
that we might listen in
to the silence thick
as air and waiting
10
deaf to your voice
I hear my own unspoken
at the imaginary
doubling of this world
connect the dots
and a bear waddles across the sky
lose the thread and the stars
return as facts
between the sound and its echo
enough distance to dream
only in separation do we seem
to cross and in crossing
divide
little tremble
sit beside me
in the vast and cloistered
a vole buried in the earth
the earth buried in space
as words would have it
the sentence bends both ways