30

Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere... than in your own house. I know how to grieve a person, but a book? I see its face in dumpsters, fires, left beside the road amid broken stoves and strollers. The chess master sees his pieces in the same part of his brain as he does faces. They are that to him. At the chess pavilion in Chicago, a black man yelled at me about the best minds of my generation. I'd forgotten I wore my Howl shirt that day. The poem is a face, one with shades and birthmarks. Put it in a situation, like a floatie in the ocean, and watch how it responds. If salt eats it, go for sweet.

--4 February 2015