[Lying in bed I think about you]

By Joshua Beckman b. 1971 Joshua Beckman

Lying in bed I think about you,

your ugly empty airless apartment

and your eyes. It’s noon, and tired

I look into the rest of the awake day

incapable of even awe, just

a presence of particle and wave,

just that closed and deliberate

human observance. Your thin fingers

and the dissolution of all ability. Lay

open now to only me that white body,

and I will, as the awkward butterfly,

land quietly upon you. A grace and

staying. A sight and ease. A spell

entangled. A span. I am inside you.

And so both projected, we are now

part of a garden, that is part of a

landscape, that is part of a world

that no one believes in.

Source: Shake (Wave Books, 2006)

Biography

Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended Hampshire College. An editor at Wave Books, he is the author of Things Are Happening (1998), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Award, Something I Expected to Be Different (2001), Your Time Has Come (2001), Shake (2006), and Take It (2009). He has also collaborated with Matthew Rohrer on the book Nice Hat. Thanks (2002) and the CD Adventures While Preaching the . . .

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