A WORD FOR A WORD WE CAN'T REMEMBER
I often feel I am going out on a limb
using words
like 'therein'—but
There in Santiago, this morning, was sawdust,
gathered at the foot of Sebastián's bed—
very suggestively, he was obscuring the fact
that he was in love—as we spoke on the phone
about the nonsense tails
on the ends of words
that you can't recall—
There is a 'thingamajig'
in every language—he told me:
I was a demon, now I am lettuce,
a lettuce in love
I ask him the word for sawdust, thinking maybe
I am that—
he said sawdust is a word they use
for what they can't remember—
Last night, as the little dog galloped after a
fluttering white moth
tuned by the moon, in the dark
as my old friend from another life held the long
leash and laughed—
I felt a hovering sawdust inside
and wondered if I loved him
more than he loved me, and even later as we
spoke of various forms of love,
forgetting the philosophical names,
I went out on a limb—
said— we can have any combination, therein
TYPO
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