Originally published by Brooklyn Review, Fall 2018

The Third Eye Counts

not at all. It rolls, unfocused and lashed

shut, worm-white, unbidden by you

in some place like the black void

of a frying pan. It hides

though it may not want to. After all, who bothers

with an eye not yet accustomed even to

soft lights and the harsh knowledge

of where you might live in a year? The buildup

of strength to use it is monumental. Unworth

the effort. Can the whole project

immediately and leave alone

any thoughts of eyes, though the memory of

raking your finger over the edges

of whites will not dissipate from you

so easily, and neither will the

brief wetness you rubbed off on

your thumb, worried. You resent

having this forbidden surface on your own

body, even at this scale, like two planets

you may not set foot on. Your own body resents

you back, or at least this is how you

interpret the discomfort of

putting in contact lenses. Let alone

the difficulty of teasing apart with

your oafish spirituality a third

for scrying. Women in France used to

black their teeth with coal and ash,

thinking only of sugar, unashamed that their smiles

led nowhere. You too can sink your boats

in the bath, leave pockets

sewn shut with lint, run a catheter from

under the flower-beds straight

to the gutter. Your soil is so dark that

only its adornment of white dots

keeps it being anything, barely.

It looks lovely in front of your

clapboard house. So do you. You sleep

with your good eyes shut and grope through

the world even while the dream

comes to you, unwilling to wait.

You have heard your soul has

crawl spaces. You may find in them

nothing at all.