N  a  p a  l  m     H  e  a  l  t  h     S  p  a  :     R  e  p  o  r  t     2  0  0  9

 

 

MICHAEL ROTHENBERG

 

 

Simplify Infinity

 

Rain slaughters the balcony

I’m invisible

 

Flowers blown off red skeletons

I’m describing my death

 

My mother tells me come inside

But there’s nothing inside worth imagining

 

It’s all outside

Starlings in confusion

 

Where the body is purified by danger

 

                                    July 14, 2001

 

 

 

[“Simplify Infinity” in Choose, Selected Poems of Michael Rothenberg, Big Bridge Press, 2009, originally appeared in a chapbook, Monk Daddy, Blue Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the author.]