Blueprint

The poem unrolls to a grimy-gray, gossamer-lined, finger-printed, criss-crossed blueprint. The builder deconstructs it on the vacant lot.

As a playwright’s stage direction leaves space for the director’s voice, the poet-architect sketches specifically without specifications. For the building to succeed in its mission to serve physical needs, the poet leaves the brand of toilet to the builder’s interpretation.

Because it is a poem and not an architectural drawing, lines do not make windows, doors, stairwells, or ramps for the handicap, nor is it required to withstand fire or earthquakes or tsunamis or boisterous dinner parties or separations or the quiet undoing of early morning sex. The words can be tall and thin and quiet and stand without girders or foundation.

They can be nothing like a building at all, and yet a general contractor will bid for the assignment and hire subcontractors and explain to the workers that this is not the kind of hotel or high-rise upon which they are accustomed to laying their hammers. In fact, it is not a public place at all; rather, it is the place where a man climbs inside the trunk of a redwood and takes a picture of the woman toward whom he feels a fondness, if not love.

Very quietly, the project manager, who has arrived very early in the morning so that the workers will respect him, unrolls the blueprint and reads from it in a steady and deep voice:

in sleep
eyelashes
flicker
against
the cheek
like sun
against a
white wall
in wind

a body
heaves
and clicks
like a
radiator
in an old,
unoccupied
apartment

The workers, not altogether confused, move silt from mound to mound. The project manager returns to his office and to his files, where he writes contracts for constellations. Through the doorway, he can see that a woman sits on the edge of a bed. Her back is to him. Her shoes are on the floor next to her. The blueprint is unrolled against a pillow. She is reading it.