2 June 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 2

Deus ex Machina

by MEGAN M. GARR

1.

I am witness to the architecture

of her breath, her

sleeping. She is a fine

quiet thing until the morning comes.

When her dreams

are edged in horror. Her neck

angles upwards for air, more air,

and the air

shocks against the sudden speed

that pulls it, and her skin

takes on a desperate sweat

that she turns in, now,

and she braces against the bed, the

sheets, and I

could save her:

the turning point and the choice,

the lover,

the exactness of it, the nerves.

2.

Your grief is a foreign thing, I cannot visit

this fine pain. Particular

to elements, trojan this home,

built and capsized

in the same born instant.

It is fated

that there are endpoints,

that our lot

is not the flattened plane

of infinity.

It is our skin we never touch but see

daily, some part

of ourselves-the great leveler

irony. The lie that is

our bodies, holding us in,

keeping us whole,

destroying us finally, hungry cells

eating us alive.

3.

He was memory to her

plans for dying from the beginning,

he knew the structure

word for word.

It was

to die before him, it was

to be burned,

it was to be scattered

beneath the tree

in the front yard.

It was to leave

all of her to him:

her poetry, journals,

her Nepalese twists

of rain wood, god-like.

The memory

of her: stripped down

to fear and need only,

her hands in his,

the sweat of them,

the pull of them just enough

for escape.

4.

I am geology to this

language, I am Saussure's

fine son—the flat tones

of your voice

becoming malleable (high pitched

in this loneliness) your voice

improbable. We were always

more quiet

in the evenings, when I finished

you off

explaining the hum

in the air

as you looked

towards the door. I am all

reason and cartograph,

your voice larger now,

the temperature is dropping you

hot against my chest.