by Nathan Hoks
I tug at my socks to make certain I am still there.
I am there. The letter continues, “I send you this advice from the perimeter where mental functions take place in every organ of the body. My hair has been disloyal and I have banished it like a soul to the vegetable garden where I buried my twin brother and sister who would have turned 37 this week. Every time I swallow I become more of a wolf. The air is sobbing. The oak tree is starting to ponder my face or a star.”
The letter goes on but I will never send it to the recipient, which is I, for I am an interruption and an imposture. Even my insulting cheekbone sends me into despair. I’d like to smash its atoms in a particle accelerator and drown the invisible residue in a murky puddle before locking it in a glass bottle and mounting it on the mantel so we can look up at it with a bit of terror in our veins.
“But today I am not afraid, I am looking with wonder at a man who is raising his right hand above his head. He is small and reminds me of the glass of water my son spilled at dinner last night. The glass shattered and the water soaked my salad, but I wasn’t hungry and I gave the plate to the dog who ate the walnuts before falling asleep beside the mute television set. I closed the window and sat there thirsty.”
MIND OF THE EXTERIOR
Where is my body?
My body is on me.
Who is my body?
My body is my self.
What is my self?
My self is the plumb line
Sinking toward the surface.
What is the surface?
The surface is a waterway.
Where did it come from?
It came from the sky.
What is the sky?
The sky is a film.
How does one watch it?
One watches it with eyes closed.
Why close the eyes?
Because the eyes are the body.
What is the body?
The body becomes light.
Where is it going?
To the other side of the couch.
When will it get there?
When morning comes around again.
Why is it a circle?
I am a circle.
What is a circle?
A way to be erased.
IMAGE CREDITS
Thank you to the photographers and artists who have agreed to let me use their images or have placed their work in the public domain. (Images on the following pages are used under the Creative Commons license: Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 11, Image 12, Image 13, Image 14, Image 15, Image 17, Image 20, Image 21, Image 22, Image 23, Image 24, Image 25, Image 26, Image 28, Image 29, Image 30, Image 31, and Image 32)
Image 1 Puddle
Image 2 Mary Louis Long (née Schultz), courtesy of the author
Image 3 Woman with camera, photograph by Alfred Cheney Johnston, 1920
Image 4 Fingerprints on a glass of water made visible by total internal reflection, by Olli Niemitalo
Image 5 Water mites in a mat of floating algae, by Jim Conrad
Image 6 Renaissance revival chair, from Le Garde-meuble, ancien et moderne, by Désiré Guilmard, courtesy of the Smithsonian Libraries, Washington, D.C.
Image 7 Charles Dickens, ca. 1852, by Antoine François Jean Claudet, The Library Company of Philadelphia
Image 8 Lightbulb
Image 9 Nathan Hoks, by Nicole Flores
Image 10 Clouds off the Chilean Coast (von Kármán vortex street), 1999, by Bob Cahalan, NASA GSFC
Image 11 Några stora och ryktbara diamanter, from Nordisk Familjebok, 1907
Image 12 Ear, from Tidens Naturlære, by Poul La Cour. Gyldendal, 1903
Image 13 A generic white chicken egg, by Ren West
Image 14 Pele’s hairs seen through a microscope at 15 magnification, Popular Science Monthly, volume 48, 1895–1896
Image 15 Homemade cottage cheese from milk and vinegar, by John Shadle
Image 16 Candle
Image 17 These are the European grey wolves, out and about!, by Harlequeen
Image 18 Josiah Johnson Hawes, Self-Portrait as an Old Man, Josiah Johnson Hawes, American, 1808–1901, about 1895. Photograph, albumen print mounted on board. Image/mount: 17.2 x 12.8 cm (6 3/4 x 5 1/16 in.). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of W. G. Russell Allen. 2004.127. Photograph © 2013 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Image 19 Lacrimal papilla, from Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, Twentieth Edition, 1918
Image 20 Earthworms, by Ines Zgonc
Image 21 Le soleil, au télescope
Image 22 Raindrops on window, courtesy of Frank Vincentz
Image 23 A Lorentzian wormhole, courtesy of Allen McCloud
Image 24 Marigold, courtesy of Tracy Ducasse
Image 25 Peacock plumage, by Gordana Adamovic-Mladenovic
Image 26 Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, by Daniel J. Bonthius, Nicholas Stanek, Charles Grose/CDC
Image 27 Oak leaf
Image 28 Vega’s dust cloud, NASA
Image 29 Répartition théorique photons, courtesy of Padoup-padoup
Image 30 Wisdom tooth with cyst, by Pidalka44
Image 31 Aruncuta, 1947, by Tare Gheorghe
Image 32 A flock of red-winged blackbirds flying into the sunset, by Jerry Segraves
