Timothy Ree
I Say Now These Are The Soul
How the hell it got here, in the apartment, behind
this ugly couch we're so tired of looking at—the leg.
•
Imagine the rest of it, the rest of them naked, bald—
mannequins in the room, seated by old typewriters,
clicking word by slow word, late into the night.
•
Once, in a show on TV—up past midnight when I had
the chance—the horror wasn't the dark curly wig,
but the slow strange crawl across the kitchen floor.
•
How parts of us move, grow, in spite of us detach—
like mercy, or the idea of mercy, withheld from those
who need it most.
•
A kaleidoscope the size of a finger, forgotten toy—
looking through it to blood cells, to flowers on fire,
the inner dome of a cathedral, to stars.
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All I see now is a landscape of bone, as in Where, where
were you pointing, abba? Where exactly?
•
My favorite blue yo-yo, O the moves I'd master:
the loop-the-loop, the sleeper—the dreamer become
a dog on a leash, become a baby in a cradle, rocking—
•
The flying saucer. Or the man on a flying trapeze,
had I practiced enough, had we not outgrown wonder—
the Eiffel Tower made of string.
•
Remember grinning, first time flipping through the legend,
I whispered No, a headless horse—or a horse with a missing leg.
•
In The Seventh Seal, how the knight stares at his hand,
same hand with which he has, for now, evaded Death—
at chess, what else?—
•
That he can move it, that he can move it at will—
miracle enough.
•
We left it for you—the leg by the curb. We slipped it
between two garbage bags.
Timothy Ree lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches literature and writing at a public high school. He holds a BA in English from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University, and is currently at work on his first manuscript.