Empty Body

for Yangjah

In so many places,
we have seen you dissappear.
It's happened in rooms for plants
and middle floors,
in white dresses and near boat motors.
We've seen you vanish to biwa and be-bop
and a rattling can.

It starts
as less a look and more a distance
arrives in your eyes,
and then a mask as neutral
as the sky rises into your face
from some cabinet of the heart
that isn't measurable
in dimension, depth or moments.

At this point, we know
you have become somewhere
else, leaving your body
available for ghosts or localized gods
that may be
passing in need of form.

And then your motions get real,
hinting at some fragile narrative of echos
and secrets that don't belong to this world.
Your body churns through the space
of some parking lot, stairwell
or other ephemeral spasm of ambition
and leaves a twisted intestine of emptiness
shimmering and suspended in the air.

Like the beat of a sparrow's heart
sews a slender thread of warmth
into a wind,
into the world
your body draws out a blank enough for being
and a private history of strangers
with strangers finds form in our brains,
letting the ancient blood and milk within us
flow again of pulse and urge.




by jerry gordon
12.16.09