Thomas FINK








DECONSTRICTED SESTINA V



That my husband has yanked dialogue out
of a cesspool and into a minor
science may deserve your thanks. Most of
us comprise an experiment in enduring, so
I listen intently for the profit that
advertises softly. His apologists profit from canards
my husband, perhaps wine-tinted, devised about
my emptying jumbo pans of water on
his tattered head. Do they assess the
broader consequences of his experiment in relinquishing

the opportunity to be paid for Socratic
dialogue, his only labor? To be paid
only in verbal thanks? One bounces repeatedly
into that elegantly shut mind bent on
scarecrow profit and bounces off. A neatly
chiseled divorce is never, to my discredit,
explored. No thanks for my material pragmatism
from a husband busy acting as the
center of a cult. To make dialogue

an experiment in the suspension of desire
is never routine. One experiment in vanity—
the mindless suicide-spectacle—lofts truth-pretensions
above friends and loved ones’ palpable good,
above dialogue and the charming ways that
it outsmarts closure and liquefies our notions
of profit. And my husband cannot examine
what has long cushioned him, made invisible

by custom, can’t give thanks. With ample
mythological scaffolding, Plato, another freeloader, thanks him
more than is beneficial to the precarious
democracies that will be grafted from ours. This
experiment in deprogramming could found itself on
rage at a husband who confuses his
spouse with a wild horse, who neglects

daily to turn rare thought into profit
that ameliorates. Yet rage, sustained, turns pathetically
impractical, and I have sons (and their
daughters) who confront a father’s striated legacy.
He has borrowed the questing humility that
makes dialogue strangely authoritative, but has he

done so to stiffen its precious elastic?
Dialogue will swerve repeatedly before it survives
patriarchy. Thanks for not smoking inside. I
trust you to profit from any experiment
that respects the survival of those not

yet as fit. Reach into my pocket
and husband what’s left. My husband assumes
immortality, but one attentive scribe is becoming
my sole access to recommencing dialogue, into

which labors of equalization should
be poured. My thanks are
colored by suspicion of vested

recollection. Lately, many fund Plato’s
experiment; mine could take several

millennia to breed a profit.









PLEATED MUTTERS SPEAR:


intimate reticulation. Wages scar
most in transition. Their
employers unite where emulation
breeds coifed tumors lying
in molten modem. Acred

heiress of

naked tenements, few shuck
that luxury bubble for
haggard shreds singing imbecile
chivalry. Snot band calls
to repair bled breeder.











HAY(NA)KU EXFOLIATION 5

—for Sheila E. Murphy


Quality
presupposed tightly
assessed supplies. Do
fire crocus
prints operate without
wrinkle? Knowing hair frames
a crystal blur.

She dresses cognitively. Dozing
fists know. Omissions could confess
blazing data. Hands have
responded evenly to regnant psychopathologies.
Condescending nightie? You admit pressed facts:
palpable illusion functions as platter.

A smartly blocked window. Through holes,
we’ll experience a soiree ideal. I could
triple that shrimp reasoning. Calculated slumber
demented you, cyclical prisoner. Passionate inclusion refuses
statues. Inconspicuous flow will subsidize the resistance couture.















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