Iconography

The image wears large round glasses opaque blue

bigger than her upper face

I don’t know what she means. You image

He stood there elected. In your eyes — 

he would escape from the auto parts store to come home and read.

As I see him dead he has black hair and brown eyes

he doesn’t have to wear glasses because he’s dead.

I haven’t seen a desert lily in twenty years

but knowing they exist thrills me. One year

I went home and they were everywhere

powerful, blooming to exist and in my eyes. As I could be that

And I’ll always see it. Presidents are scum

compared to desert lilies. Oh all right, Daddy says.

The dead talk this way playing but they don’t need to write

lines — this line of thought.

I still don’t quite know what your poems are like.

Immediate — but complex. Lily? As complex as that?

As complex as us. We are seeing you ...    

As we speak and see, together, thinking it.

Do the words relax you? We are them,

reading. Being dead is like reading.