Echo Location

Stop quivering
while I insert straws in your nostrils
and wrap your head in cloth
I have immersed in plaster.
For a life mask, the subject
must be rubbed with gelatin.
And you must be the love du jour.
I have studied the duct-taped mullions
of monarch wings for inspiration.
I've learned the paramedic's rip.
Don't squirm.
(But I ran my finger down its spine
when its back was turned.)

A perfect containment invites trespass,
the wish to shave below the skin
and write in seed ink, mine.

I can testify
the tic of prayer persists in nonbelievers.
Under my distressed surface, under duct tape,
the Hail Mary has a will of its own.
The spirit uses me. It holds me up
to the light like a slide.
It claims a little give, a quiver,
can prevent a quake.
Says copy the vibrato inside trees
the star shakes, heart shakes
that ruin the wood commercially.
Says you must be ready

to freeze your extremities
anytime for a better glimpse of the blur.
Not the blur made firm, mind.
The blur itself
and not a clearer version of the blur.

Will you hold it up to the light like a slide?
Will you pledge your troth
and tear this edge off first?

The Norman name for quiver-grass
was langue de femme. As in gossip, as in meadows,
one ripple leads to the next, as in cascade
experiments: one touch and worlds take place.

That's why a little quiver can inscribe a night
into your left breast,
a day into your right. Can shave below the skin,
and write in seed ink, thine.

But when I think I've ripped the surface
to the pith, queen substance,
when I've diagrammed the cry, I

remember a quiver is a fist
of arrows and the arrows' case, their clothes.
Is the weapon and the tremor,
the cause and the effect.
Once the arrow leaves the bow
will-of-its-own-will-of-its-own
there is no turning back.
You must be the visceral river.
You must think a little give
leads to affinities: the arrow
resembles the bird it will fly into.