De re

Michelle Campagna

“when I am desired I will be chosen

when I am chosen I will take my place

when no one is near me I will be alone”

Back alley paper route: fourteen days of about the thing for Larry,

the stock broke man who lived to a toy.

I delivered him new for two as a boy.

I did it through sweat, my paper hand like a hand

reaching out through rain.

Ripe mornings punctuated by paper rolls

that I made fly

over Harry’s house.

In the desert the tent flaps flung in the wind.

I masturbated

on the tower to the trains:

freight.  I was never afraid. Coming every fourteen minutes.

Déraciné until one came to bare through deep night,

through thick folds that flap in the night.

I knew what things

like towers and mountains had to be for mounting.

What words I heard in algebra:

constant, real, rational.

Just like a good man should. Larry or Harry. They’ll marry.

About the thing is another thing. De re.

I ate shapes out of the crackers.

I was never contained.

I broke the heart of dawn by touching myself

every morning before delivery.