LORNA SORE

“Wood”
C.K. Williams

That girl I didn’t love, then because she was going to leave me, loved,
that girl, that Sunday when I stopped by and she was in bed in her nightgown,
(it only came to me later that somebody else had just then been with her),

that girl, when my hand touched her stomach, under her nightgown,
began turning her stomach to wood — I hadn’t known this could be done,
that girls, that humans, could do this — then, when her stomach was wood,

she began turning the rest of herself to perhaps something harder, steel,
or harder; perhaps she was turning herself, her entire, once so soft self,
to some unknown mineral substance found only on other very far planets,

planets with chemical storms and vast cold ammonia oceans of ice,
and I just had to pretend — I wasn’t taking this lightly, I wasn’t a kid –
that I wasn’t one of those odd, potato-shaped moons with precarious orbits,

then — it was Sunday, though I don’t recall bells — I was out, in the street,
and where is she now, dear figment, dear fragment, where are you now,
in your nightgown, in your bed, steel and wood? Dear steel, dear wood.

New Yorker Aug. 21 ‘06

Mr. REED: I can hear stuff all day. If I don’t take that idea down it’s gone; hopefully to be replaced by another one, so you can’t get too serious about this.
INTERVIEWER: Now, do these moments just keep presenting themselves in life?
Mr. REED: Yes, endlessly.
INTERVIEWER: So it’s a matter of deciding what to notice and working…
Mr. REED: To me, it’s just these horses you could ride if you feel like it. It’s a bunch of motorcycles. Do you want to hop on the sports bike? Do you want this one? Do you want that one or maybe just walk? But I mean, they’re always there.