S is the only volume of the encyclopaedia you are given.

There are two kinds of people who don’t believe in gender.

You’re still trying to figure out whose work this is.

 

There are bodies and flags stencilled on the wall.

Just the outlines, but you can imagine the rest.

What you would have to do to make yourself that legible.

 

Shannon’s maxim will one day tell you that the key is the key.

This time, the enemy knows you better than you know yourself.

All you have is the encyclopaedia, which has it all wrong.

 

You were never taught to signify beyond your boundaries.

You still can’t distinguish your skirt from your shadow.

In the silhouette, you have come to see no one at all.

 

You never suspected your skeleton would be the key.

Yours to turn straw into straw, string into string, self into self.

 

 

 

 

 

the lid is lifted the piano

            open latex-fingered gloves

stroking

            from the inside

                                    volante

 

the cello decides on the usual rôle

not to play but

                                    to watch

two hundred and thirty sympathetic

            stars

as wet as you

 

footsteps in your gullet found

just as you were

                                    lost

here in the dark everything happening under your skin