Pursuit of the Yellow House


            The way the body builds a house
                        around a grain in its own sight,
objecting to the object, mulling

            and mouthing it, washing and rubbing it,
                        making a little gem of pain
the body soothes and swaddles in a small red

            pearl it sets upon the outer grasslands
                        of the eye—
did the house arise around you

            because of something other, the barren
                        possible, a tender, trembling mux
that flowed from you and cooled?

            Or did it first appear
                        in the distance—
note-on-a-staff, hand-shaped bird,

            flickerings’ ledger, cornice-of-a-cure—
                        so that you,
Manger-Monger, Dank-
           
            Hankerer, Daffodil-Whisperer, Termite-
                        Diviner and Would-Be Curator
of the Secret Stair where you did and you

            did and you wept and you
                        lay down and
no more than usual did the sun refuse you,

            pursued—
                        with wood with wooing with words—
this casket of sun this what-you-hath-done this

            deckled abyss this claw-colored is.
                        Mute vial.
Tear-on-a-string  

            the color of use.
                        Amber ampul
to contain our    —all. 

            To set us loose.

First appeared in TriQuarterly.