The woman with the pale hair is signing
the poem. Not that kind of signing.
Her hands dip and flutter and hop
against the black backdrop.
Her mouth shapes emoticons.
Really, I’m not sure what
the mouth’s for. I watch her lips,
the poem changed to hieroglyphs.
She makes her eyes turn off and on.
Keats’s could do no better. Still
wouldst thou sing and I have ears in vain.
Her face goes from happy to pained.
She is inside the poem where the birds live
with their hollow mouths.
I am watching her more than I’m listening.
The poem is not something she believes.
It has sprouted on her like leaves.
It has come out the other side of itself.
Which makes me wonder if I will ever
be able to recover from language enough.
Those people who pray with their palms up
as if they’re catching or releasing
electromagnetic waves?
This is definitely not me. I’m following
the words as if they were closed captions
for the trumpets and blazing of the Rapture.