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Underneath (9)

Written by: Jorie Graham | Biography
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand on it.


Explain the six missing seeds.

Explain muzzled.

Explain tongue breaks thin fire in eyes.




until night blinds it temporarily.

What is it searching for all the leaves turning towards you. 

Breath the emptiest of the freedoms.


When will they feel for the hole in your chest 


Those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads-

thinking or sight?-

all waiting for the true story-

your heart, beating its little song: explain. . .

Explain requited

Explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require

explain the strange weight of meanwhile

and there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought

complicated obstruse subtle devious 

scintillating with change and ambiguity


Explain two are

Explain not one

(in theory) (and in practice)

blurry, my love, like a right quotation,

wanting so to sink back down,

you washing me in soil now, my shoulders dust, my rippling dust,

Look I'll scrub the dirt listen.

Up here how will I

(not) hold you.

Where is the dirt packed in again around us between us obliterating difference

Must one leave off Explain edges

(tongue breaks) (thin fire)
 (in eyes)

And bless. And blame.

(Moonless night.

Vase in the kitchen)


Explain duty to remain to the end. 

Duty not to run away from the good. 

The good.

(Beauty is not an issue.) 

A wise man wants? 

A master.


Oh my beloved I speak of the absolute jewels.

Dwelling in place for example.

In fluted listenings.

In panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.

Muzzled the deep.

Fermenting the surface.

Wrecks left at the bottom, yes.

Space birdless. 

Light on it a woman on her knees-her having kneeled everywhere 

God's laughter unquenchable.

Back there its river ripped into pieces, length gone, buried in parts, in 

Believe me I speak now for the sand.

Here at the front end, the narrator.

At the front end, the meanwhile: God's laughter.

Are you still waiting for the true story? (God's laughter)

The difference between what is and could be? (God's laughter) 

In this dance the people do not move.

Deferred defied obstructed hungry, 

organized around a radiant absence. 

In His dance the people do not move.