BLINDS

No matter where I move, they’re there already,
hanging round the place to greet me, filmed

with dust and ticks of moth-tracks. They’re always slightly
skewed or flipped or cracked, off-white with dangling

magic sticks. You have to work with them
for weeks before they see your point of view.

The point is not to look at them as such.
You have to tilt your world a little, let

a second set of slats emerge, composed
of this—and that—the gaps—intensified—

by gaps. You have to love the view for what
it lacks, miraculously tragic now

it’s hacked. You have to wrestle with the leaps
and fractures, like a string of words that chops

your neighbor’s pit bull into thirds. You have
to let them cut you whole no matter how

the sun is slit, or if it turns you cold.
You have to grasp the light and dark at once