Tiff Dressen & Alex Mattraw

Night Callous

“Io cannot die. Prometheus cannot rest. The oceans are helpless. As for us,
we can neither live, nor disappear. The stars, at night, emit sparks
with the rhythm of our breath.”

–Etel Adnan from Shifting the Silence

I hang mirrors around three corners

of the garden. What disappears

in this making?  Slackjaw

looking through our trellis-talk,

“Prophesy has now passed the

limits of understanding”

my head flash-chatter again.

mind-fur, sand-slips, bare

feet shed night callous. The truth

is an overdose of seeing.

Because we

learned

to distill

panic the

first drops

were murder

The truth is he used the kitchen to fill a glass carafe with tap water,

then placed it in the center of the yard.

I drink the whole bottle. Sky lip, road

mouth, stem armed leaning out

“Now it is words no longer: now in very truth

the earth is staggered”

for the real, the upside down

yarrow more yellow in the movie

            but dream I am you

I sleep on fault

lines exceed

the Curie point

of iron

moon. Silver tulle skirting

clay kneeling at his feet I said

when I try to sleep I wake harder

in the dream I try to wake

hot afternoons

on granite inhale

artemesia fever

imagine parallel

selves in geo

synchronous

orbit

Because we

mistake

arborescent teaming

for true

how to go slow

to go fast

“The triple formed Fates and

the remembering Furies”

Let me tell you the

tale of rhizomatic

adaptation we

could wake

Apollonian green

“Tell her what remains of

her wanderings: tell us the one

that shall deliver you”

blister you through

marsh salt blossom

dune through

desert looking glass

cracked into song-

wept solar

sight I weep

diatribal

sun petals

threaded

out of sun

Uprooted I

curse animal heat

in my finger

guilt wool

I point

out of aging 

seedling wilt

a history

of pointing

arthritic deity

I deform ask

tracks

between

paralysis and

infinity where

in the god’s

ratio is

suffering?