Nothing About a Fork

I grew an arm and forgot the rest of the body.

My hand arrives like a verdict delivered by weather.

Knuckles, those soft hammers, practice saying yes.

Veins like thin red corridors where a choir would hide.

I have a tool and it is not a fork.

At least, not for food, but

a tuning-fork for a hunger you can’t swallow.

It is a wishbone that refuses to break.

It is a divining rod for the place where speech curdles.

You can comb a cloud with it.

You can part the day like hair.

You can pin the mouth of a question to the wall

and listen for breath leaking out the edges.

Green air spreads like a diluted bruise.

A small sun rolls under the horizon of the table

and sits there, glowing in the hem.

My arms float, obedient to nothing.

They point to a location inside the hour

where gravity keeps its private spoons.

We hear the spoons counting.

Touch the metal to the floor,

the floor remembers iron.

Touch it to the air,

the air remembers bone.

Touch it to your own thought,

Which produces a door and walks through first.

I consider the other uses:

to lift a sound out of the throat like a fish;

to pry the eyelid off of noon;

to fasten the wind to a corner;

to unbutton a rumor;

to scrape a thin faith from the rind of silence.

The sleeve has its own weather system,

clouds of red-black, spills of gold, night-puddles.

When the elbow bends they migrate.

I swear I hear rain on fabric that is not wet.

Buckets pretend to be mountains.

Dust practices being a galaxy.

The window is an eye that forgot it can blink

and simply watches me watching.

What is held here is the hinge of a sentence

about to be spoken by something without a mouth.

What is offered is a portion of day,

sliced neat, shining with the ordinary.

If there was once a body, let it rest.

My arm is enough to finish the ceremony.

It lengthens until it becomes a road,

until it becomes a question,

 until it becomes a note

you can balance between your teeth.

We line up our breath for inspection.

The fork hums and each lung salutes.

Approved by color, by quiet, by the beautiful bruise of intention.

Hold still, says my sleeve.

Hold on, says my hand.

Hold this, says the metal,

not knowing what “this” is.