We spend our Sundays recounting dreams. The sun always
looks drunk, lurching in and out of the leaves. Slowly losing its nerve,
it settles down beside our white house. You say ex-presidents are the
problem. Clinton comes gripping your shoe’s only tongue. Reagan
hand-shakes your amputated arm.
Washington won’t stop washing his teeth. He kneels at the mouth
of a New England mountain. On top, there’s an office filled with
rank birds. The flapping makes the real weather retreat. All we’ve
got now are flocks of false clouds. An appointed time when the turnstiles
start spinning.
On the border of your tongue, there is something asleep. So we invent
different words as the moon slurs along the sky’s dark edges. Like
a series of cardinal vowels, played at equal acoustic intervals, our
mouths move away from every language we learned, into a space reserved
for flying—aphasia. We take a long walk in this rather small place.