Stanislavski Method

COHORT 3

Because your father cannot hurt you

in places that do not yet exist, you

must, like a god, abandon your own

self & invent new body parts:

a third arm, a wood plank stomach, things

you can easily squirrel away

in broken elevators at Westfield Montgomery

Mall. Why you always find yourself

in broken spaces is only a matter

of geometry, the way all the angles

inside a triangle add up to

a hurricane. When your father’s on the porch

he tells strangers to fuck off & they do

fuck off, un-hammering their teeth

from the tarmac & slouching away.

Oh, but you fuck up

all the time. You still don’t know how

to look at a ceramic mug for what it is, a ceramic

mug, but for its relationship to

your father: how it sits on the kitchen table,

him never having slid his fingers through

that handle. You still don’t know whether

you fear your father or want to be

your father, so you get in multiple car

accidents & let the airbag against your body

decide. It’s so easy for you

to come back to life but so much harder for you

to stay alive.

Could a cello case holding a white

stallion, could a Solo cup sloshing

with embryonic memory, could anything

possibly save you now? Wait outside

some 7-11 forty minutes from your house

where, this time, God has kept space

for an eighth day. You have.

The way you know now to close

your eyes & enter where the snow

falls like cold, crushed peach slices.

When the rambling wino approaches you

in the white forest, he leaves no footprints behind. Listen

as he says your drinking water is contaminated

with phytoplankton blooms & the government

has wiretaps in all our brains. Listen

carefully. He’s telling you

about his father. Sure enough, he might even

be telling you about yours.

Revised version forthcoming in DIALOGIST