Poem: “Sad Little Breathing Machine”

Engine:@

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination—cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut’s helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don’t know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees—yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

• From Verse, Volume 18, Numbers 2 & 3 (2001).

Video: “Breathing Machine” by William Kaminski