The particulates of matterand one man on a plastic slab,lying so still a black bear,
shambling through the hospital,would nudge him with is noseand leave him for dead.
Close quarters of a cylinder:embalmed in a missile,I’m shot into the clutch of armies—
sounds of battle: scrape,crunch, clang of swordson shields, roar of jet engines.
As the MRI works, I prayit can’t detect failures. On cue,the machine catches, slows
to the rhythmic thrumof a hammer pounding nailsin a coffin. It knows
the brain’s a tangled knotof blighted thought, a gnarledwhorl of the soul’s dark root—
then it moves to the body’slush pastures, a harvestof grains and tubers
in the long magnetic season.
