hysteria starts in the womb—just pluck the first &
the fifth strings towards each other & you’ll see
how osmosis works—it’s not just an act of becoming
equal, it’s an act of becoming written. someone sits a
woman down & tells her to stop “playing into things”
& the woman decides to learn the banjo—do you see
what I mean here by causality? to say that we are
conceived is to say that we are compositions, reams
of paper wet from a kettle, blackness underneath nails,
things exchanged in childhood, an arrangement of brass
& string, a performance in which a letter is posted &
read, a collection of small animal bones, nuts, algebra.
two men sit on a porch in kentucky & play one
meaning.