The Register That Accosts Me

A thumb tack petitions the atlas
for custody of a coastline
no pin ever visited.

The atlas refuses,
because every coastline is already
busy masquerading as a zipper.

Somewhere, a kettle translates steam
into unpaid rent.

Somewhere else, a pencil
inherits a staircase
and spends the afternoon
wondering which step was its mother,

before writing on the receipt, IO01.

The receipt says mercy is itemized, 1IO.

Mercy is a cupboard
where the bowls rehearse breakfast
without ever knowing cereal.

Breakfast is an election is a matchbox
full of sleeping ink pads
that wake only for fingerprints.

The fingerprints are on my fingers
which are a violin. Its case is a glove,
carrying a field mouse’s diploma,
although the field mouse is unemployed,
as the diploma majored in lint.

Lint is the ancestor of velvet.

Velvet is the way a basement apologizes
for storing darkness inside glass bottles.

Each bottle contains one unmailed letter.

Each letter contains a hole
that has converted itself to handwriting.

Handwriting is the nation
where my left shoe was elected mayor
after promising every alley
a dead body.

No one mentions the right shoe.

The sock has become a chapel
for lost arithmetic.

Arithmetic kneels before a turnip
and asks how much darkness
can fit inside one apology
before the apology begins charging admission.

The turnip shrugs.

Shrugging is a public library
with all the ladders checked out.

The librarian keeps shelving fog
under mineral, mineral
under rumor, rumor
under the alphabet’s private illness.

I borrow the illness
and return it late.

The late fee is a brass rivet
that believes it invented attachment.

Attachment is a suitcase
packed by a widow who collects magnets.

The magnets cannot decide
whether north is a destination
or a habit with good posture.

Posture is the moral problem
of every ladder.

The ladder solves this
by becoming a sermon
against altitude.

Altitude takes offense
and mails darkness inside a bottle
to my former handwriting.

Inside the bottle,
is a city made of corkscrews
that opens every bottle
except the one holding the city.

Lust is not in the bottle.

Lust is the clerk
who stamps my pulse
with yesterday’s ink
and calls the mistake a passport.

The passport travels alone.

It visits a museum of corpses,
a factory where reflections are taught
to stop auditioning for water,
and a rented planetarium
that smells faintly of cabbage.

Cabbage is a planet
if you are poor enough
to orbit dinner.

Dinner is a committee
where salt votes twice.

Salt is a village
of granular white arguments
that vanish on the tongue
before anyone records the minutes.

The minutes are kept by a lantern
that refuses to light
on theological grounds.

The flame files an appeal.

The judge is a spool of thread
with jurisdiction over tangles.

The jury is absent,
having joined a parade
for unsent letters.

Every letter carries a window
too shy to become architecture.

Architecture is what happens
when hunger learns geometry
and refuses to call it shelter.

Shelter is borrowed gloves
left inside a freezer
until they dream of palms
from a different century.

The century arrives wearing spectacles
made entirely of rain checks.

It reads the menu
and orders an envelope
with extra clasps.

The clasps are ceremonial.

They swing between a cradle
and a cash register
that keeps ringing
whenever somebody forgives me
incorrectly.

Incorrect forgiveness
is still forgiveness,
says the corkboard,
covered in invitations
to disasters that learned better manners.

Manners sits beside me
on the bus
and offers a peppermint
wrapped in census paper.

I decline.

The bus becomes a comb.

The comb becomes a treaty
between scalp and static.

Static gathers a chorus
made from almost-language
standing outside the courthouse
with pockets full of flour.

Flour remembers being a field
before it was asked
to rise.

Rising is the problem.

Anything that rises
eventually has to answer
to the ceiling.

The ceiling has hired a clock
to prove time is merely furniture
with etiquette.

The clock fails.

Its numerals resign
and open a shop
selling directions
to people who already arrived.

Mercy is one of those people.

She buys west,
folds it into a napkin,
and tucks it beneath the name
I was saving for an emergency.

The emergency is a narrow bridge
over a hive of bees.

The bees are accountants.

They audit the honey
and discover sweetness
has been living
beyond its declared address.
The address is on the envelope
that is in fact, a chapel.

The chapel is a thumb tack
that no longer wants the coastline.

It wants the finger.

It wants the wound
that proves a map
can be wrong
and still lead somebody home.

Home is a hotel that dreams of lust
Lustless it signs for a parcel of wind,
and the register at the front desk
accosts me, and I, being polite,
forget who I am, so completely,
that I am allowed, briefly,
to answer as anyone.