Statement of Record
You can know the Star Spangled Banner by heart
You can know what happened to your kids
What happened to your town after the flood, after the tornado,
after the life was kicked out of you
You can know a little or a lot about American history
You have to wish me a happy birthday,
Claire says after her analyst says
“look what Duchamp has done
with his individuation process!”
A cabinet of curiosities lined with mirrors,
my arm enters, my hand grasps a rattle
that was laid next to a pewter fire witch,
crooked hat, eyes wide, hands up,
before dust encased the objects
and spiders made their home.
i inevitably repeat myself and i suffer
i say that i’m the reporter of myself and others with
some extra neurotic variant and that makes it okay?
I never met the snake, but the wife did.
The wife saw it, not me. I know
that there are no snakes. There are no snakes,
at least not here, not in our garden—
this is what I told the wife God knows how many times.
There are no snakes around here,
I told her, just as there are no angels.
We’ll go back
to my apartment and
open the door and the
kids’ faces will pop
with happiness. They’ll
run toward us, ram their
heads into our stomachs,
so eager to be held...
and who are we to stand
displaced in all our promise
as if the legends don’t continue
and we have not met regret?
It was dusk, and the statue of Edward Snowden
was working overtime to track the deletions
in my last email to you...
Statement of Record