After Reading Lao Tzu
The one who speaks does not know. The one who knows does not speak, wrote the old master, which perhaps describes the situation. Meaning we were all sad. Meaning that when you were seized by desire, it was nothing more than flesh, bared above the collarbone she poured the long night of herself into empty coffee cans and cornfields and brushed by air. Meaning: It's chemical. So that when the moon rears its parched head, her eyes a mask on her face, the livestock snorting and pacing, her absent husband...she died young when you feel a finger grazing your neck, it's only wind created by the movement of her daughter crying and lighting fires under the bed your own body. Downdraft. Live stock. Because sadness is multiplied don't worry, she told me, you can’t inherit this by sadness. A cradle of no compare. Loose conspiracy of mind and body, dough swelling over the edge of the bowl, the yeasty smell of it, a disease that is a blanket over the window a pillow over the face known and not spoken and also the other one, who speaks and does not know what to say.
Used by permission of Oberlin College Press. Copyright © 2010 by Amy Newlove Schroader. From The Sleep Hotel by Amy Newlove Schroeder, Oberlin College Press, 2010.