has a giant hand
diagrammed in front of her place
on West Tennessee.
It towers above a kudzu hill as if
to offer a cosmic How!
as in Hello! from a long
way off, as in how
she already knows
the sundry screwed up ways a day
can go days before
I park my wreck on the hill again beside
her white Mercedes. O
little slice of Lebanon!
O cedar scented
cards fanned like feathers
of a Byzantine peacock! Tell
me again how I
might have been a fine lawyer, that I’ll raise
four kids in Tallahassee, how
I married—it’s true—on
my lunch break—Yez
she took you to lunch
okay a zeven year lunch ha ha!
Incense. Mini-shrine.
A wagon train of chihuahuas snoozing by
her slippers. You have anxious
about a furniture… I do. But
lately I’ve grown cold,
unconsoled by her
extrasensory view. I think
—no need to speak—across
the black tabletop, I don’t want to know
if I’ll find a bright city,
a room by the river, a love
I will recognize
by her dragonfly
tattoo. O narrative of ether!
O non-refundable
life facts! say that what happens may not matter,
or that it matters as any
story does when two fresh lovers
embrace the old pact
(her bra on the chair,
his socks in the kitchen) that says
their love is level,
unfabled, new. Level with me, tell me why
the dogs on the floor, little
moon fed hounds of Delphi, seem
so over it, so
done with the fleas of
destiny. Maybe that’s the right
attitude, no need
to ask why I’m here on a perfectly blue
Friday, content with
what the thin air, what the dust
motes in the light say
near the high window. I
should’ve learned that music long ago—
O soundless number!
O jukebox of being that the dogs dream to! No
faux crystal ball, no tea leaves
or terrace in the nether
reaches of my palm
will make her answers
less like hocus pocus in a purchased dark.
It’s time to pay, to drive away
from telepathic altitudes, to say adieu
to why love ends. How
How a heart opens again. Why
anything is true.
"My Psychic" first appeared in My Psychic, published by Sarabande Books, 2006 © James Kimbrell.