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IMAGE 1: 9, You are in an ordinary suburban bedroom with bunk beds, a bookshelf,

two wooden desks and chairs. You are lying on your back, on the top

bunk, very close to the textured ceiling, staring straight at it in fact, and

the room is still dark except for a wedge of powdery light that spills in

from the adjoining bathroom. The bathroom is covered in mint green

tile and someone is in there, singing very softly. Is he singing to you?

For you? Black cherries in chocolate, the ring around the moon, a bee-

tle underneath a glass--you cannot make out all the words, but you're

sure he knows you're in there, and he's singing to you, even though you

don't know who he is.

10, You see it as a room, a tabernacle, the dark hotel. You're in the hallway

again, and you open the door, and if you're ready you'll see it, but

maybe one part of your mind decides that the other parts aren't ready,

and then you don't remember where you've been, and you find yourself

down the hall again, the lights gone dim as the left hand sings the right

hand back to sleep. It's a puzzle: each piece, each room, each time you

put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, your ear to the

wound that whispers.

You're in the hallway again. The radio is playing your favorite song.

You're in the hallway. Open the door again. Open the door. /END IMAGE 1

IMAGE 2: 11, Suppose for a moment that the heart has two heads, that the heart has

been chained and dunked in a glass booth filled with river water. The

heart is monologing about hesitation and fulfillment while behind the

red brocade the heart is drowning. Can the heart escape? Does love

even care? Snow falls as we dump the booth in the bay.

Suppose for a moment we are crowded around a pier, waiting for something

to ripple the water. We believe in you. There is no danger. It is not

getting dark, we want to say.

12, Consider the hairpin turn. It is waiting for you like a red door or the

broken leg of a dog. The sun is shining, O how the sun shines down!

Your speedometer and your handgrips and the feel of the road below

you, how it knows you, the black ribbon spread out on the greens be-

tween these lines that suddenly don't reach to the horizon. It is waiting,

like a broken door, like the red dog that chases its tail and eats your rose-

bushes and then must be forgiven. Who do you love, Jeff? Who do you

love? You were driving toward something and then, well, then you

found yourself driving the other way. The dog is asleep. The road is be-

hind you. O how the sun shines down. /END IMAGE 2

IMAGE 3: 15, Like sandpaper, the light, or a blessing, or a bruise. Blood everywhere,

he said, the red light hemorrhaging from everywhere at once. The train

station blue, your lips blue, hands cold and the blue wind. Or a horse,

your favorite horse now raised up again out of the mud and galloping

galloping always toward you. In your ruined shirt, on the last day, while

the bruise won't heal, and the stain stays put, the red light streaming in

from everywhere at once. Your broken ribs, the back of your head, your

hand to mouth or hand to now, right now, like you mean it, like it's split-

ting you in two. Now look at the lights, the lights.

16, You and your lover are making out in the corner booth of a seedy bar.

The booths are plush and the drinks are cheap and in this dim and

smoky light you can barely tell whose hands are whose. Someone raises

their glass for a toast. Is that the Hand of Judgment or the Hand of

Mercy? The bartender smiles, running a rag across the burnished wood

of the bar. The drink in front of you has already been paid for. Drink it

the bartender says. It's yours, you deserve it. It's already been paid for.

Somebody's paid for it already. There's no mistake, he says. It's your drink,

the one you asked for, just the way you like it. How can you refuse Hands

of fire, hands of air, hands of water, hands of dirt. Someone's doing all

the talking but no one's lips move. Consider the hairpin turn. /END IMAGE 3

IMAGE 4: 24, You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves

you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr-

ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself

a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy,

and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to

choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and

he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your

heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you

don't even have a name for. /END IMAGE 4