Elevator
There are ways of boxing in meaning, rooms within rooms, the architecture
of hell, cracks that hold within themselves civilizations, a molecule of
air that covers generations.
I used to sit in an abandoned elevator waiting for the ruby hour--
I wore a white towel at my waist, a white towel on my head. I was John the
Baptist. The elevator was that which shunted forth between heaven and hell.
But the elevator could not tell you if you went up or down.
You shut the doors, waited for the deep red button to glow.
The elevator, perhaps, is still there, rotting shut.
Or perhaps it has ascended.
Definitions are merely rooms such as this. Verbs are the endless corridors.
The pronouns are vast, distorting mirrors.
The doors are thighs, the doorknobs are teeth.
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