1
What kind of name
is a name asking, when the one
spoken to, continually attenuated,
does not speak?
Steady affliction,
my entire person, this embodiment,
what went missing in the first place—
self, samara, the winged fruit.
Called also, key.
2
What follows self?
This slow foment of shape, this semblance,
similitude.
This sham,
a ghost-town assembled, seems so spectral,
so fabulous, it will not fade—
it’s me, it’s me, it’s me—
The lock fixed in which a voice utters “turn.”
3
What was intended?
A form
in which a name could elicit such trembling,
each limb buffeted and broke and separating.
The self now sundered, now apart.
O help me through the fact of you, unfasten
whatever arrives.
Someone wants in.
--Joshua Kryah, 2006