A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory
By Kate Colby
1
Certain labels are impervious
to solvents, impermeable
as drawn bridges.
Adherents are bound
to bridge and tunnel
around
columns
of figures
playbills
newsprint
and smoke
dispelled
by the wind
in Stovepipe Town.
2
Tall buildings tip on casters
or are counter-
weighted
also by the lurid light of subways.
Dust gathers on the wainscoting.
She runs a hand around a column
marbled
with the spectral pain
of amputees
Containing decomposure
in dividing cells, abiding
effacement
the door plaques and pediments
engraved with dispelled words.
Concentric desire outspreads
her strained connectives:
she’s diaphanous,
dazed and diffused,
flecked like fake marble.
3
There’s a devotion called unflagging
to seeing oneself in surfaces
in a window, a shadow, a standard,
or the immediate space around another body.
She rubs against the space between them,
like that of repellant magnets.
And he does his part in words
with the sound of empty
soda bottles.
4
As a child on the stop,
she traced her tarsals,
sucked the bend of her elbow.
Some parts of herself she’s forgotten,
though others who’ve loved her
know them better.
This ease-based knowledge replaced
by a longing spiral on a spinning disk
pushing outward from an empty center.
5
a mackerel sky descending
Copyright Credit: Kate Colby, “A Body Drawn by Its Own Memory” from Fruitlands. Copyright © 2006 by Kate Colby. Reprinted by permission of Litmus Press.
Source: Fruitlands (Litmus Press, 2006)