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A litany
Poetry
~after Richard Siken
Leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness,
this is when the revolver’s spinning chamber
click click clicks
like the wheel of numbers
on a combination safe. Put the stethoscope over your heart
and listen for the mechanisms locking
into place, because the combination
is an ex-girlfriend’s phone number
long forgotten, like which chamber contains
the live round, and which are the blanks.
Have you ever danced with the Devil
in the pale moonlight? Have you felt the tremor
at the edge of your self, a mapping of the smallest sound
quivering like the shadows of leaves?
Blame your madness on the ellipses of orbits,
then discover that you were wrong,
madness is a genetic defect,
a motorcycle with one wheel,
a motor-unicycle revved until it smokes.
There’s an earthquake every seven seconds,
or maybe I made that up. Perhaps the moon
is breathing, taking us…
