Visible World

     Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
                                                                                                flat on the wall.
             The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
                               the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
                                                                                 pummeling you in a stream of fists.
         You raised your hand to your face as if
                              to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
            as if you were the small room closed in glass
                                                                       with every speck of dust illuminated.
           The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
                                                                                                                  from passing through.

Richard Siken lives in Tuscon, Arizona. He is cofounder and editor of the literary magazine spork. He is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. A recent volume of his poetry entitled Crush was the winner of the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.