Two Poems

Michael Lynch

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE GIRL WITH A FACIAL TIC

Eventually, you welcome each spasm,
vital as any other involuntary act
of the body. The free corner of the eye
and mouth impelled briefly toward each other,
urged taut. The beacon of the face's veiled
musculature pulses out its code: the mythic
rhythmia of cells like the choreography
of iron filings around small magnets,
all the convulsive fits and leanings
of the flesh. Even now, her shoulders bared
in the café's frowning light, a sudden swell
of understanding: her left cheek is the still point
around which all matter swirls.

YOU WILL DISREGARD THE FOLLOWING DIRECTIVES

Disregard the pills. Deny the stomach pump.
Abandon punctuation in favor of half
and quarter rest. Be custodian to light
that blades through twisted blinds—
feed it small shadows. Steward this sling
of orphans: mason jar of seaglass and pea stone,
cornflower scallop shell, silver ring.
Disguise yourself as an empty bed,
your bedroom as a corridor. Leave
nothing behind. Truncate the dwarf
juniper, complacent in its shallow pot.
Fetishize the amputation, the pith
of ghost-limb and exalt the phantom shootings.
Busy the still metronome and spring
forward the clock. Disquiet your bundled wrack
of pages. Study each. Nourish everything
sensible. These windows have been painted
shut; razor them free. Distrust this place,
its lovely expectedness, its absences
curated like cast figurines.
Forgive yourself. Write me back.

Michael Lynch

Michael Lynch's poems have appeared most recently in Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He is currently involved in a project titled Underlife—a word/paint collaboration with his brother, the painter, J.F. Lynch. He lives just outside Boston with his wife and two children.

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