And last year, in one of the world's miserable corners--
in Seattle, it rained for 32 days straight last January,
and this poem came out of that.
So it's a special kind of unpleasantness.
It's called "Here, There."
"Everywhere a special kind of maiming
is going on in a recognizable dark.
It's a monster, but average and bored.
It carries a flail and plays a threshing game.
It cuts us darker till we're spare and part.
Tongue.
Torso.
It shaves us, wears us thin.
It hones us to a pin, a single inward point.
It makes a bone spur out of us and out of joint.
Our knot is drawn into a stranglehold.
What we know is pinched and tight,
and day is just a hard stone to whittle a self away on until it
cracks and sinks.
You think you're cold?
Touch it.
It's in the closet and under the bed and in the alleyway
and in your head."