THE DENSEST PLANET
Sometimes, it’s the fangs
that wake them, and others,
the smoke signals from the other
side of the world. Mornings,
they spit poems or toothpaste
pink with blood and try to make
grace out of danger by treading
carefully on the bridges to each
other’s mouths. I think that’s what
it takes to be a citizen, one says,
and the other nods, wishing
there were more assassins
on Law and Order. A record
player spins static and the past.
They both admire the ecstasy
of a waist in a mirror before
recalling childhood as a shirt
that never quite fits. They die
over and over again, the last time
the longest. They sit the same
way at the table where they
first tasted time: a searchlight
grazing the tremors of a pepper
shrinking in a bowl until it’s redder
and hotter than the sun powering
this planet, the densest one:
the only not named after a god.
***
Photograph of Tarfia Faizullah courtesy of Graywolf Press.
