Calvin Smith
COMPRESSION #2
On the bus and suddenly aware of tendons. The obviousness of tendons.
Or just their weightlessness. All movement compressed down
to the conditions of the image—held like the tension on the surface of the eye. So even
with you next to me, only look at me through the window—
through my reflection in the window—laminated with the others. Every spine
held up, apart, less with the logic of ligaments than of light—like
the image of a body before you realise that it’s yours.
Or—against this—that the bus might dislocate—turn abruptly—
and that the window’s reflectivity might give way, finally, to the landscapes past it.
This distance of planes. Longitudes. Empty fields stretched to the horizon.
And this is no substitute for self. It gives no certainty. Only a vibration
mounting, slowly, in the spine, as the vertebrae adjust to interpret the light. The tendons
of the limbs, and the neck, tensed against themselves, poised to enter—or re-enter—
the world of fact. And pity—like someone lost in a carpark—anticipates the collision.
Calvin Smith is a poet based in Wellington. His work has also appeared in Sweet Mammalian.