A Letter from Hammertown to the Red Hook Public Library


"They wanted to hear 'Baby Elephant Walk' with new ears."
Stephen King "Cell"



Was wrong as usual
about acupuncture Mike

turns out torques 'twixt
the wobble & the "chi"

do decrease activity
in the limbic seat of pain

no thanks to me or thee--
the MRI looked like my Compaq's

halting defrag, blue blocks
dimming like the lites of Harewood

used to in the pre-surveillance
eighties, not "dark"

like coffee or a scary 45
but coalmines, hot subocean vents

the inside of MacDiarmid's beach
& everything either swept off the table

in an excess of joy or clung to
like an eyeless Teddy shuffling

thru a mezzotint snowstorm,
chewing the sweet caraway seed at the heart

of its trauma--
but when the needle enters the skagarrat

turns out the alpine red static that says "prick"
is the easiest to placebo,

it's a centimeter in where
the boggle hangs it shingle

and you wake up smiling
in the crotch of the loveliest plane tree

in the park, trunk waving
in a warm hurricane of bliss.