It’s all already in the body,

Whispers the body to the body.

The conclusion, the leap.

The round lust, the exodus.

The great unspooling from

Birth to death, then to when.

The very old songs,

The lurching toward freedom.

The hull of your ribs holds

A theatre which is a cathedral

Which is inscrutable space past

The farthest known galaxy.

Fill it with dancers, with heat

From bodies, breath. With the

Vasty drum of feet on boards,

Snow slipping from branches.

These singers like porcelain figurines.

These dancers like mahogany spears.

This woman is a movie screen.

This man is an untethered hawk.

I would cry out from joy or wild grief

Or the fathomless freefall of skin hunger,

My hands seabirds seeking rest.

But the pixel is the atom of isolation.

A caressing of the self, instead.

A movement like electrons.

The body is a clock. A metronome.

A sunken galleon. One hundred wolves.

The international space station.

Elephant tusk. Andromeda. God.

It’s all already in the body,

Whispers the body to the body.