Custom Earths
by Alex Niemi
I pulled the geranium out, muzzled and damp, then loped to the hill
I imagined my hooves turned to older things, mossed with quiet, etched into deeper
atmospheres of the earth, as it was and won’t be when the letters fade me
once I was and then, written, only my mother wouldn’t know me now
when I cross the sea, an agile mountain of atomic radiance,
every danger within me broad as being suffused to gentler points
of convention, moved by encounters with murmured speech and reckoning
a sucker for becoming myth until my transforming unseams
that is how I began ending my hands and using my mouth to hold
flowered into thought, mawed by air almost strung from a wall by intent
no fox owns his den and I worked for the flood of your fur under mine
the fence is charged with our tender wars, with outflown humanness unspared
it rained—what is a divide without an illusion of former freedom lost
nearby we are still standing, painted over with inventions of dust
poised, slicing
I won’t touch
your shaking hand
particles, each
motion a promise
to keep a green gut-
ted, on
on, the tremor
silk of new paper
touching my best
month of the decade
tundra before this
dark rooms for musting
then, the possible
actions expanded
into herds
each run a timber
each end a home
perhaps a hand
told us to stop
eating the petals
as they fell to the table
while the high tea
becomes a wake
for the flowers
in the near urn
or wishing
a plague on the rats
of our youth
each silo
wore the sky best in Iowa
each penning too safe
too withered to make a deal
when lines shorten
it follows the eyes
of your neighbor
already reach the field
where were you?
all the while
each brother pulled
out the hem of his knife
looking over
your mother’s shoulder
for a symbol of sex
and summation
the origin story reforms
evidence says:
relative
only to material desire
a border
to weave from eye
to high tower
the grass gives up
forms an economy
of garments
boxes of dolls
each with a custom
birth certificate
the coordinator vanished
he may be dying
on a beach
we slowly forget
the face of the coordinator
when I first earned
my lung
he pinned it under
my ribcage
such an intimacy
when I breathed
and wanted
his hands elsewhere
he’s out
now
my breath and motions
spaces
when they said I could form
a body
I was invisible
a strange cage
the coordinator had to see
me before
the transition
could be attempted
lately I’m afraid
that I was even
visible before then
