OPTICS

You eye Narrator’s hands in the sand 
and the sea. The first time, Narrator 
swears: differentiation is yours.
But You are busy—an entwinement 
with tulips. Rotted stems feather 
so still, down these halls. 

Narrator confuses anyone 
with a follower. Jealous of heat 
Narrator files words by their shadow—
shadow of cup, shadow of thread, shadow 

of piano splayed for parts down
the block. Yesterday, waves
are feeling. Tomorrow was reverb. 
The form Narrator craves: molded tracery 
of bone. 
            ( Lately, I wonder, if I come, will

You? Or will I be met by just I? )
In this vision light flickers, slits 
the suit of your tongue. Narrator appears 
by the fence, by the tree. By bruised 
barking of dogs. 

It is Narrator who decides your disinterest 
in language. A word delimits each 
image but present and Time becomes 
false: a shot and framed thing.
On thin shores of midwinter, skies 
turn grey, turn green. Wean the currents 
and ask—do we stand on land 
or a cadence? 

You’ve never picked fish, eaten lilacs, or
slept the whole way through, so to reach
past Before, I tilt back the sun, wait for clouds 
to distill our diaphanous hour and translate 
You: a crisp, flat disc I can hold.

            It took relics to build this vision.

And another: I leave shells on and braid
your body with feathers. I bind Narrator
to my heels with sharp reeds and thick
salt. Then we drink as dawn throws
three shadows off pitch. 

Or this one, still: ash fell in our hair
for a season. You are Narrator
and I and I and I am iridescence
what knows more than we are—

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Claire Dauge-Roth is a poet and textile artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work circles the textures of memory-sound, materialities of translation, and what it means to know. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Antiphony Magazine, The Queens Review, and Revue DuCoeur. She is also a PhD student of comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she works on abstract language and form.