27. BROWN RECLUSE

That brown recluse
crawling across
the polished floor
is Emily Dickinson.
Ruby Rose
said that she could
“play Emily”
& so could I,
because I am
Emily Dickinson,
which makes me
“nobody!”*
I close
jagged drawers
where love letters
as dusty as
the first compass annulus
clouds-up
vintage ache
-breath, forges
surfaces to awaken,
heralds shadows
like a “mackerel sky”—
saw-tooth waves
is how I’m viewing
History through a
dicroscopic eye
-piece, double
refraction
summoned
to appear as if
Harriet Shelley’s
apparition
re-appeared at
the top of the Serpent
-ine. Where
I spotted the recluse,
the over
-stimulated sensillae
of the floor
wintered-over,
spearmint output
voltage, slipping
a chill of seasonal
spaces, flipped
like Geomagnetic
Reversal as if
Stephen Hawking’s mouth
had been turned
upside-down.

________________________________________________________________
* Ref. to Emily’s poem, XXVII: 

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!