I.35

i watch him touch him                     self over a screen
and pretend                                    it is with my hands

how you pull a quiver                          from an arrow.

he moans and i grow               jealous of the satellites.
their capacity for translation,           to code his sound
in numbers                         unbraiding in my speakers
lucky metal                                      audience of cables.

i know the wireless signal is all                   around me,
that i’m drowning in his                   unrendered noise.

how from a thousand miles away                 i can dam
myself                with the light spilling from his hands.

what magic is this?                           distance collapsed
into the length of a human breath.   what witchcraft?

six years ago a bridge between us                   collapsed
the interstate ate                            thirteen people alive
asphalt spilling                             like amputated hands
into the dark below.                  what is love but a river
that exists to eat                       all your excess concrete

appendages?                what is a voice but how it lands
wet in the body?                                    what is distance
but a place that can be reshaped     through language?

how i emulate and pull a keyboard       from the ashes.

how i gave him a river             and he became it’s king.

how any thing collapsed                           can be rebuilt.
take our two heaving torsos                           take them

how they fall like a bridge into the water
how they rise up alone from the sweat.

- Sam Sax