There Are Three Flowers On One Stem And Do Not Take Them

It starts in September. It holds up
a boiling mirror so we can better
watch ourselves standing around
in different attitudes of light. If you
are not there yet, I text to let you
know I am and am standing in
a wide corridor of light like a wedge
of cake kept for a year in
the freezer: bridal, overbright,
out of balance. I write into the livid
mirror with my finger and my equations
burn. Say we are in our cups. If “cup”
follows readily from “we.” If I circle
the scene again like a compass, hawk
or bat-shit lasso. If there goes your
pretty oppositional face, lazy-susaning
into view. If given anything, I will lose it.
Like an old child, the light weaves hot
loops and I have late fallen sick, dizzy,
drinking magazine water with all the tacky
questions swimming inside it. Why Do Men
Pull Away? Why Do Boys Yawn and Cut
Out and Recede into the Distance Hiding
Themselves in the Hills like Ants?
Death, where is your branch? I asked
and it fell out of my mouth but
it was larger than I imagined it would be
and I couldn’t fit it into anywhere.