Erik Anderson

from The Identity Event

A woman pushes her son in a stroller. The wheels go round.

The suburb beats on but dully.

In the distance, a plane. We point.

It’s all—everything—predicated

on the premise: nothing will happen

the night fall and all that

happens eclipsed

by the nothing that won’t

and the nothing that will.

*

So I heave my heart in my throat, with cocktails, pills,

small animals—accumulating what?

It’s too easy or too hard to make a show of it, the heart.

You can’t defend against a body

but who grows up with one?

Or the body around them bodes (this could happen

to you) or doesn’t: they don’t

turn into others, him an other or them, they—

*

Listen in for what we’re going to do
put your hands around my neck
to interrupt my breathing

sea, the desert
a part of that sea and the sea
a part of that desert

the written extends
the read and the read is the sea
of the written extending
an extension, a reciprocal sea