Shirts or Skins, a 2014 poetry chapbook by Jim Redmond

In Search of Weldon Kees

Just outside the empty Plymouth Savoy, which idles somewhere, still. You’ve left your keys, your cat Lonesome, two red socks in the sink, you’ve left a few calm measured messages, something about Mexico. You’ve stepped out into dark matter, dim lights, followed the low hum of a radiator, burnt out at the bottom of a spyglass, where you’ve made yourself your final disappearing act, said if this bridge bent open beyond breaking, like a wishbone: the cold steel of forceps widening above the river, the rustle of gulls, the taut wince of power lines, holding up the high rise, the noteless passing of a numinous entirety through this; said this is the opening I’ve practiced, deep shine through the speculum. The city’s tired resurrection as backdrop, pulling itself up and up and up at the hemline, you’re one false stitch that doesn’t hold, cannot be held; this little he loves me, he loves me not, lifted up. Along the coastline, huge mechanical cranes tucked in on themselves as if too terrible to move towards any point of reckoning.

 

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