print previewback JIM REDMOND
Hard Water
your name was a debt fragment
you had to read right to left
alone to your own
rent-to-own devices;
the tiny foreclosure’s addition
right up to the crease of it:
a bloodline like a book
mark settled in the buyer’s guide.
~
the republic’s last aperture;
linear has lost all residency with you.
the large black sofa sinks into itself.
there is nowhere to sit.
you stand outside
of the one vote allotted to you.
~
some nights you can’t sleep
require a more imperial membrane
salt trespass
your say, short of foetal
takes time-released capsule
takes facial indeterminacy
to have gotten this far through the yearbook
to drunk dial all your old dirigibles again
to hang up
without having your say
so big in that sky
~
in this dream a police presence.
you search
every emptied room from your childhood
with a dowsing rod.
you can’t even remember
what it was you were looking for.
everything left
the way it wasn’t.
the TV starves itself on the same channel.
less itemized now than . . .
maybe a notebook, a faulty CD,
a few strip plugs;
the slow stave of memory:
the things you forgot to turn off,
a night-light with nothing
to shadow.
~
instead of the titles and deeds,
tiny claw marks in the impeccable
wood grain.
inside the display case
you don’t find the display.
~
as one flashlight tags the insides of another
you have seen your own scrutiny
mechanically separated.
how do the young loves do it
when it’s time for goodbye?
two clicks for no and then the total darkness. 
Hard Water
Let There Be