Having mastered the art of using magnets
in discretionary acts
                like making a pencil
                                float above a table
or a throwdown of iron filings in stasis
becoming a shiver of black rain
                in the air between
                                points of contact & repulsion
I began to harvest my own
absence of weight
                as when appearance & illusion
                                are indeterminate
as one with luminaries such as
moonlight on ice so thin
                the face of a risen fish
                                can be seen or a vision
of skin through translations
of heat lamp steam running
                beads on glass
                                & other manifestations
of desire that turn to harm
when intimate is confused
                with intimidation
                                so careful not to wake
what was left of my own dubiety
I swore allegiance to charms
                & spells & went
                                about my work indoors
in the dark until a thin horizontal
line above the window sill
                & the heavy hem of the curtain
                                grew dim & I neared
the plaster rose on the ceiling
like some vast albino spider
                & if the story of how I came
                                to leave the earth turns
to something like heresy of hearsay
instead of myth it will be
                because I summoned as witness
                                to the capitulation of gravity
a trapped bird in the blacked-out
flyway of the living room
                that battered my face
                                with its wings & made
a sound you’re more likely to hear
in a clearing than a room
                & also a rainforest moth
                                with its avuncular disposition
& feathers for feelers
that testified to my rising
                by shaking amber dust
                                into my eyes & I know
that what has occurred within
the small parish of giving your word
               is a poor substitute for proof
                                in the form of audience
involvement like passing a hoop
as portable portal
                over the body to eliminate
                                the use of wires & yet
what of the bird that refused to leave
when the doors were thrown open
                or the moth that had taken on
                                the texture of the basal
cell carcinoma on my hand
that developed
                as in a dark room
                                of the mind.