Amy Kislyakov

Inside the kaiten-zushi restaurant on 57th st,

All orders must be taken at the front.

The hostess, hired by the carnivore of commercials,

Plants the calendar in a garden of

Dead batteries and dirt.

Some find this off-putting,

But those who tame does not teach understand that

She survives where seeds never start.

Beyond the done who always does (the doublet),

Amid prophets scribbling stepladders to the sky,

Worlds within worlds,

She tells me,

Was she listening?

Several sips from the oxygen tank later and we

Sit down. Dial set to zero,

The conveyor belt in drunken parlor,

And a signal to the chef.

Play that song again

He loops the horizon around the turntable,

While stylus, soldier-like, waits at the stop. Indecisive,

Though not yet disheartened, his stethoscope finding its way,

Like bone with knees on gravel, to my head.

He asks,

Who are you here to see?  

As if, back to back somehow, his eyes a socket of my own,

Plugging the finger in and pointing

To the freezer door, we follow.

Behind the door,

There is a clinic,

Resembling a cave (the home of uniforms, don’t you

remember?)

Like the one inside your ear,

Two seats where three people sit,

And a merry-go-round under the ice,

Spinning below the babysitter of clouds who nods,

As if to remind me,

These are things I have seen before.

Centimeters, inches, and feet

On beaches where sand can count.

A mountain just above,

(Or is it a volcano?)

Where archaeologists study how silence becomes silver,

Yes please,

Sorry and thank you,

Rings for the receptionist,

Asks me to leave a message:

Dear pattern and prediction,

           Is this what you meant when you said

You worked with the wind?

Just as it begins to snow,

The neurologist pulls us into her office,

Up stairs past monuments in elevators,

Holding trophies during halftime,

The fog of their breath on the glass,

Give me a call as soon as impossible.

…the one I forgot to mention.

They tell me it will be the coldest winter on record,

that cockroaches can survive anything,

that tsunamis stow away in secrets,

that the coincidence of meaning

and the meaning of coincidence

do not share a common ancestor.

What about love? I ask,

The doctor hands me a compass,

Gives me the number for the point of view of perspective,

And zooms into the scan of my brain.

I suppose I could have run at this moment,

Down that traceable line back to pain in pajamas,

Hands at the helm (steady as ever),

Ready to haul me in.

But what happened next could not be evaded,

As a matter of fact,

If I even try to recall the moment following,

I am left gnawing at that gap,

Reaping the repeat with loopless hands.

What I can remember,

(and this might just as equally interest you)

Is a kind of metamorphosis:

My body with fur, feathers, claws, and a beak,

An assemblage of affects siphoning

Into our shared vanishing point.

How, then, can I tell what you don’t already know?

Like all things round and sharp,

From ice age to boiling point,

We lay in a field of fusions.

Amid falling trees, the flowers

Aflame. Tomorrow will be new.

Take the metabolic meteorite and swallow it

Whole, and try, as one does with ax and hammer,

To pin the nail behind the knock beginning,

Towards a flameless future,

Where we will meet under veils of sound.