after rain on my cartography,
Kat Dixon

i will carry you by your ribcage
a chain link fence slung, war child, on one hip

i will not know you by a homophone
but by the nation-borders smeared, transparent, against
your spine, the same
we spread across the table for lunch

or else i will be confused along my memory bones
so that i must recite your buttered-up directories
in a dangerous old english:

by the compass kept behind your knee
(goldfish sleep with their eyes open and know everything)

and when you are months ahead of me,
shaken from a rug to be viewed in full size,

i will carry you by your november and it will take both hands

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