Bridge
1.
Bridge’s absence gave the creek a new aspect.
Uncrossable, irascible. Crosser stems
on the bank with her will and form,
extension “Phantom of incapacity
which is me.” Bright roar of water,
x of indomitability.
2.
The bridge is not an x. It bridges nothing.
The turmoil is only a portion.
3.
Bridge on the grass is brideless.
Tufts of terra like a bloom in air.
Rational slats, a surface’s accretion,
slat system. Grass tints it, heliotropic
emanation, sharp, up, or complex
occupation in shiving rain.
4.
Creek’s uncrossability, a new beauty.
“It looked like the process of a thinking,
deep run.” It became the suffering of form
and mute suggestion. The syllables
were not perennial. They broke and grew.
5.
The blue pants of the crosser were neither sky
nor water. They orient to the body
as form and boundary. The crosser’s green shirt
neither grass nor leaf-thought.
Desire to not get wet, another hurt.
6.
“Glamour of limit, where the rocks just slant”
down the bank, in a wet
stratification, and the creek
spills blows and goings
and is omniform leaving, a prime of seem.
7.
High water as a contour of relation
swells, hurls. The creek which was other
but not antipodal, or refusal. “The wish
to touch it with my phenomenal hand”
loves it as material.
8.
The bridge made the force containable.
Bridgeless the crosser sits, and very still.
“My phenomenal body crosses and longs.”
Ceaseless body of the audible.
Copyright Credit: Karen Volkman, "Bridge" from Whereso. Copyright © 2016 by Karen Volkman. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.