[James Midgley]

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The Weather

Asleep in its meat
the tiger catches
a few important facts
here redacted.
Instead we turn to
facticity itself
which via tiger
should be understood
as blinds. See,
he is conscious elsewhere,
the tiger, he is
dark inside
but you may peer
and dream
the sacked marbles
in the sockets
or the barbs
the housecat covets,
the dream covets.
Someone is going to
offer up a pigeon
which is to go quite beyond
fact, to put the bird
among the cat,
which should be understood
as eating. Question.
What reprimand is fitting
for the tiger bounding
out of bounds
at your dream's behest?
Call it a name.
Call it lion.
Make it speak
a language it abhors
like French,
the tiger making preference
for consonants that clip
each grey ending
from its flight.
In the whiskers you have read
the aperture
through which a head may go.
From the feet you know
the acres of running
and the breaths that grow there.
In the darkened room
a hand kills a candle;
a scalp sticks
between black railings;
and the roar
is more chalkboard
where cursive repeats
a word not quite legible --
at least not to you.



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