Andrew Ruzkowski: When I wake, I

Some-
            where in this     dawn
            I will understand the sliding
                                                            shore
makes sleep-tongues swell and
break our throats’ pounding black spasms.

            A
            gull floats and sways
                            like a planet caught mid nova.
            It
                            dips, coughs to me in
                            Januaries, says “remember,
            on-
                   ly   my bones       are
                        hollow and soft enough                           to bend.
                                    Can
                                                you shape a torso,
                                                mimic sweat like want, thread a sea-
son
through a glass eye?”
            I speak sand   again and again.
                                One
                        nail against my throat,
                            against my sinking blank portrait.

                One
                        vocal cord strung
                        between fingers, stitched on knuckles
                        bared
            natural,            normal.
    In this debris                       my hands till clouds,

trace
a stilled palm, a
            lined thing’s lined distance.  This flesh swims
                        on
            bone as a mantle,
            as a globe turning us to

leaves.
            I go beyond
                              something unequivocal like
            flesh
            swimming and sinking,
like a diorama of breath.

Look
at this tragic
figure, something like a clock face.
            It
            reads in sound, an
image like my eyes cut lengthwise.