Elizabeth Willis, p.2



OUTER SPACE HEATER

To build a room of hermetic fireplaces, locked with the key of sage reflection. I want a fire to singe my skin, a match to play with, but not here, rescued from pleasure by poetry, raining away. I didn't know, and don't, how to really clean a corner. My teeth's an ode to dereliction. Did Coleridge dream of gum disease or was he too absorbed in snuff? We all absorb the surface culture. It breathes us in, sneezing us out every two hundred years. Why risk warmth; it's safer to just dive in. To become a picture of a perfect arc.