Ish Klein

This Now
            for Greg C. Purcell

One

When I went through your door this morning I was a boy.
I was a boy with the old black eyes of early wurm.

By boy I mean world embryo or frog since it’s round
and will make sound soon sometime (my faith it is to say).

A circle seeks a circle. Is that weird? Incorrect?

Say in my ear a straight line so I can declare “I”.
Lend me a pin to point to my base to drive it home.

By base I mean feet, by feet I mean what I’ve done
well. What I think I’ve done well. Subjectively well done.

There are six basic spokes from my center, you have more.

Wheels turn by hand and feet and throat and mind from the heat
of the head. That I died last night: yes. That I’m alive

is more true now. A hermaphrodite. You know this well
accept it as though, as me you would love to be too.

For inevitable noise, I’ve made alternate lines.

I love this good trick, I love this trick love, being switched
with you. It seems we are very different at times too.

We sleep where we are and where we think we are: the sound
of sounds are different from each other logically.

Two

To wake and know the cabinets incredible
know where the cabinet food goes and its many tastes.

I rummage through the cabinets of this place sleeping
and all your eyes line up on the floor as staying words.

I like because it’s good. Its good to like. I don’t care.

Or I wake in the memory of money: old rope.
A wild germ feeds my rope idea. That’s how I choke.

Plane acid spoils a sector of memories: close now.
Behind one door: seeds in a jar below empty jars.

Outer air can’t enter this fermentation process.

From the cabinet in the cabinet you go out.
There are tricks to teach the sailing ships— their memories.

I do not want memories but I want to know things.
I don’t care. Love is logic and invisibly on

among other things. The problem of desirous rings.

They yell feeding time being teeth and stomach’s stomach.
Growing nails and hair inside, in another stomach.

In another swelling a stomach, in another
stomach a swelling. Do not let this thing swallow you

I’m saying this to me and you. I want to be done

with the old, old radioactive material.
I say to you: think this river. That is me, to cross.

When you go through me I am able to go through you.
The knowing holding, the knowing holding, holding us.

Nothing can, nothing will erase this life, we’ve written into ourselves.

Ish Klein is the author of the poetry books Moving Day and Union! and the dvd compilation, Success Window. She is the author of many plays including Drummer 41 and the Faust remake: In A Word, Faust. She is a founding member of the Connecticut River Valley Poet’s Theater. She lives with her husband, writer Greg Purcell.