Inhibit

It is the anniversary of being
filled so full there was no space left
to fill. There are verbs to describe this:

hilted stuffed loaded thronged crowd.
It is not economic being
built to submit. To withstand to bear.

I can fit my whole fist in my mouth.
I can buy olive trees and name
the body held outside of the body:

an ocean a car a cello a mass of land.
The slowing or prevention of process,
a photograph of me giving the finger

to a photograph of Patti Smith in a mirror
also giving the finger. I am shy. I am shitty
I am afraid of formally naming the body that owns

a body of water a car a cello a celestial body
A you which is not real but an idea
of collection. Of possibility.

At night a bell rings in the top of a buoy
shaped like a lighthouse in a harbor
shaped like a fetus curled inside a womb.

What is real is compressed.
It is an anniversary, I buy
a star a whale a section of the ocean

I can name after my fears. Locate
them by measurement, numbers
with decimals and more numbers

after that, name them after
what I am not myself allowed
to touch in myself;

The wholeness of wine,
what is left on the palate,
the full resonance of sound.

first published in SWWIM