after Joy Harjo’s ‘Without.’ 

i will first have to excavate wine from the pit

of a kissed pomegranate      just to reassure

myself that the world         will keep trudging

through time                                without me.

I try to carve                              salad leaves

into a lettuce into a flower            so the self

stays inside                            its cave (like a

rotisserie chicken           hiding in peak heat).

Making something to eat from all these gaps               

is the same as walking into mirrors

of illusion at closing time with no other quiet

places to warm these           messy leftovers.

The roast                 of unremembered kisses

printed into paisley,             puke on the stairs,

ginger, matted hair, unfulfilled flowers pressed

so hard that the red shouts in numbers up to

twenty      one. too weak to hide in the kitchen 

behind all these fleshy echoes of body and being

is the same as slipping accidentally from my mouth

into all this   human history.