Whose Sleeves: American Tagasode

your shape is in the robe    worn or not

a roominess of you folds into its cloth

a sachet in the drawer from which the air

of the place was taken   fixed of    you’re here

the smell has temperature and space

the wider warmth that buttered popcorn tastes

and not you    it folds into a time’s clot

a sachet in a drawer   personage of its own still you

                                 *

I have to wear a bus to Rikers Island with

opaque tears up to my neck to get in       to see you

in your two inch thick glass robe I have to imagine

you naked under   to place my hand saying

I miss you against you where I can’t touch and love

has to break across insulating space       still warm

I have to stand my day in the folding up put away

given you as time   with you. I smell I need you on my clothes

                                 *

I smell gunfire folded in      to every turn

the city’s track laps into its hands on race

then files away not guilty    I smell the drawers

of the records they keep   folded away    from stands taken

away  distance doesn’t dissipate

the space between the bullet holes in you in me   folded

you are the map I have to sleep with in my pocket to be sure

I know how to get out of here

                                 *

your shape is in the robe    the sharp creases

of its fold when you wore it   blocked into

the counterpoint around you   that even

folded stood you out to me   that they couldn’t

see you   that one day   they would shoot

always folded into the robe you wore

gun or not   phone mistaken or empty handed   innocent

or not   there is this fold on itself  we sleep in

           in the fabric

           of this country’s culture