Outside the train, backyards. Bare clotheslines strung
only with clothespins. I wonder if it is going to rain.
Outside the train, a rabbit-skin, oddly clean.
Night spreads sweeter than anise in the city
where we are going, where a man sits with three shots
of absinthe, the sharp green of copper, after.
And we remember that there were three shots—
because why so many for one man and in a row.
Outside the train, children wearing gloves.
Outside the train, blank townscapes where once
they lined men against a wall. There reaches a point
when counting becomes a waste of time.
Night spreads sweeter than anise in the city
where we are going, in its parks by the river
where it is dark, deep dark, as space is dark,
under a moon that is light, is barely light,
as God is light. And God is a smocked collar
over our literal heart, is our sadness
in spilled things—glasses of water; memorials.
I tell you what happened is not unique,
but it is particular. And I like particular.
I like careful. I like every word thought through,
like when Žižek shakes his hands in the video, says
it was some maybe probably genocide.
Careful maybe. Careful probably. Careful genocide.
Night spreads sweeter than anise in the city
where we have arrived, and over a table
that is a little too narrow, we agree
to give up. Which is intimacy, maybe.
And intimacy is also houseplants,
the manner in which curtains touch sills.
We say alright. We say thy will.
And all of this, quiet. And all of this, running out of air
like pool floats, like pale blue. Like us, if we cut
even the smallest holes in certain parts of our bodies.