Fold.

 

When I sit straight at this white page

I am crisp. Taut

Like a bright paper crane.

Edges and flat cuts, the folds

Of theater flyers

And wrinkled tape- Smashed against

Windows on the wavy interior

Of thick pop restaurant glass in the

Rain-gloom TV static New York,

A child passes

Brushes a hand across the glass numbly

Fleeting away like the touch-down-fly

Birds I remember from my old house,

Fat and impossibly light

From between the French doors against where

I could never catch one fully in my eye.

 

It means that I’m expired. That

I succumbed to myself a relentless

Generator pulsing out black tick marks and headaches

And disappointing sketches, smearing

The walls of each tiny white room that

I find in the crumpled in-jams

Of contracting origami.