First, to dig a ditch

                                          the shape of a body

                                                                            or,

                        shallower and closer to home,

scrape off flaky lead

                              paint or dead skin

                                                                           blistered dry by sun. Second,

                        to play a trick or spoons or pull
 
with your teeth — bend with your mind to make

                     a spectacle.

                                                         You’re a spectacular jubilee.

                                                                                                        Look,

                                      it’s a mirror holding your face that ends

                  up where the light curves

                                                                                                                      where you end

                                                                                                                      and the up ends.

                                      Comeuppance upends

                                                                            in an up-

                                      stairs away from the noise of the kids.

You barely recognize your self-

                                                                                                              portrait in a convex curl.

                                                   Third,

                                                   to pool light in,

                                                   to sip lightly from,

                                                   to be a way toward light — 

                     a conduit connecting cut lamp wire. Fourth,

                  to scoop the eye jelly of a Cyclops

                                          from between your foot and sandal or

            scratch off the sap-turned-tar of a burnt log

                               driven into the oculus of some Polyphemus,

                                                            which either means much

                                                            renowned or many

                                                            reputations or

                                          a straight-A student cutting

        sophomore English again

like here we go digging again — 

                a hole

                     the size of a larger body

                                                                                                                      this time.

                                      Isn’t that the way it goes? Fifth, to steer

                                                                                                              a mouse afloat,

                a rudder or oar for a mouse-sized boat.

                                I’ll say hat,

        and you’ll say

                                we’re playing again.

            Sixth, I’ll say poem,

and you’ll say

                we’re playing again.

I’ll say this spoon is an or.

                                                            Oar?

                                                No, or.

                                                            I think you mean and.

                    I think I mean and

                                                            I’m startled that I do
 
                                                            at all — 

Dujie Tahat is our Poet in Residence for December. This poem originally appeared in Shenandoah, Volume 68, Number 1.

Previously: &, leaving my therapist’s office after a breakthrough, and what child is this.