5 June 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 2

Plaza

by TODD FREDSON

1.

Panic-lodger, flush in the rafters. I didn't realize

I had been watched so well. The faces

my mother used to make

down at me:

where your angels are: finding points in the world's body.

2.

Your sleeping thumb

taps REM inflections on the back of my hand,

a twitchless dream-pulse

in that fontanel

where the thumb parts with the forefinger—

                                                            there stands a vein,

and all the hinges. A binding

that does not hold,