Finding The Actual Lengths And Widths Poem by Desmond Kon

into the black, leukocyte-white
that points native, a slavish-vernacular
in red-aureate arrows to underline

[there are sunless worlds underscored]

a plurality of such cursors, needlework-cells

that there is not oneness but a motley-miscellaneous
fluorescent courier-lights across this airstrip-ceiling

stratum alight, white-lying storeys, a rangy league?

the invertebrates ground unconscious
big damask bedsteads, comprisal, total; formaldehyde
and the inhabitant artist dips self-estranged

[old habits die hard for us, timorous too]

the shock effect of possibilities, carousel last-hopes
the waylaying large-scale shangri-la, a body armour

scale these drawings paraclete, intrinsic parities surveying

scale these long limbs, a jump-starting, a move about
the cut of down-to-sizing bricks, of red-tartan mix

this scale is smaller, the ones used at home venerable

put two or three or four together, armistice-white
streetwalking blocks together; and together luck-struck
you get a cottage industry, slowing toile-comfort

[if you go there, ask them for the many any names]

[go quick-unyielding and go easy]

past the dressmaker, his long-low hems a lined kohl
you abet nativity, suckling faith of sorts, nursling-naiveté

[what’s in a name after all, what upscale names]

of countersign scriptures reassigned; scant, chary
but nothing topical or life-breaths or lacerating

nothing liquid-oxygen or astringent





Author’s Note:

This poem was first published in Sonora Review, a literary journal of the University of Arizona.