Apogee Poem by Michael Brennan

PRESSED BETWEEN two atmospheres, fatigue swelling in your eyes you rise up and face day, the intrigue of chance cast in the air, a face you assume, a name of so many syllables, so much history. Erstatz-coffee drawn from chicory, azure-leaves as bitter as morning's current affairs: the interminable process of adaptation. You sort the ephemera of the real, loose leaf files, around some system, think of distant friends, sense the mutual gravitation of associated bodies, the logic of words forming syssarcosis, ill-defined ligaments that bind and underwrite the plausible. You breathe in as contingency allows. Close a door, a series of syllables expiring in the mind, fractals of thought rhythmic, language operating below itself, opening in ganglia, flowering toward an impulse to annihilate le travail de destruction. On the wall of the station the metro is a giant's print, the concentric lines break through at points on the peripherique into the violence of unknown spaces. You press the green cardboard ticket between thumb and forefinger, and would decouple light from matter so that the universe grew transparent. You think of Kant unwriting God while a busker strums out a few lines of Brel je ne sais pas pourquoi le vent s'amuse dans les matins clairs. The woman opposite strokes a dog in a gym bag, stares, and you remember a girl in Maastricht now more distant than time and space allow, a name that returns in dreams of beautiful drownings. You cross the wooden tiers, the library stacks tower over you, the premeditations of their architecture grimly wry now the librarians no longer recall the catalogue's shibboleth and so, of course, you have a drink or sit by the river.

- For Tioui