what’s my workwhat I thought our shadow                on the distaff side                lined out women gone outeither way from you                pulling thread out of flax from the staff                writing                anything we want                depilating                or setting hair                if each dimension in time is also another                already folded in or stacked on topour work might fall off the display                but maybe we don’tduring the war being a reliable thing to say                what metals went into the sentence                into the tack and spurs if iron was cheaplet’s say iron with what vigilance the books say                was in the air                everyone came to see the rebelhero sent away in Adah’s body                a thing she mastered onstage                until it was a room she could leave                                shavings of metal on her fingertips                animal grease     in her teeth in her century                                no edits or quick takes outside of a trainor strapped to a horse     onto that externalizing love                machines call up                like when it rainsdrops shine slow in our desert                air threadedabout the water tower                and eucalyptus grove                like stage curtains                heavy until they’re not                like any of the videos that assume one dayyou’ll join those of us still looking                the curtains lighten                but never fall off the little swarms                Napoleon Sarony’s publicity pictureslifted and split Adah into                “a New Orleans baby”“I will create a new sensation     depend on it”     Adah promisedthat shudder in a long sequence where sides fold in timein edits in the eye she put herself there and gonein a dummy’s place tied to a real horseriding four stories up a narrow ramp a new feelingoff a great horsewoman     wolves on the run Inca doves fog the stage     for an ideal manof refinement taciturn was a woman seen     in their thousandsconical retina tunnels layering     each other’s looking so many timesdid it feel like they slapped space red to its surface     then a fineash in the wrinkles     it’s not a space for details that fall away in wordsclean blood     where no one steps in the reservoir you can see it between usseeping in degrees crusting or draining     into various attitudes renderingfeelings her busy arms would strip the airclean of critics saying     “She poses better than she speaks”