Objects for a Fog Death
by Julie Doxsee
Black Ocean, 2010.
104 pages / $12.95  Buy from Black Ocean or SPD

I do not think I will respond
with a bevy of clasp holds
to this bezel. A poem, then,
by way of re/view. How groan
she made it look like an accident
the way “Februarying” brought
us lyfe and the eternal year
but then a fog death behind it.¹
I always like to die like that like
²                                      .

It was awaiting me, somewhere
in the vs. but I got lulled into it,
one spur of the surreal detail³ .
Sometimes death is the creep-
ing moment where it silently
“overwhelmed over/ night.”
Doxsee’s spaceTime bends to
accommodate the ghosts in the
grins.⁴ It’s about getting sucked
in by language as breath, dim
light of some skull torch. Even
partial-heards, like “of your breath/
we sleep” summon the soft
hurt. Pert language makes you
wince and fill. If the objects
have echoes⁵ , I still know they
are in the things: “origami
swan” “sphinxes/in your hands”
“sea-green floor.” These are the
objects that killed me when I read
this book of kills. They stuffed
me smiling into a deerskin box
with just enough room for my
toes.

↩ 1.“sullen hikes in the/ ice cream snow” and “snow/ waiting for a large person’s/ angel smash.”

↩ 2. “when the horses went/ hoarse in slow motion.”

↩ 3. “They’re so/ tiny because I/ erase my house/ with a broom.”

↩ 4. “So why do you/ think I’m quiet when/ the water bulges like a howl/ & your fingers undo/ the bouquet?”

↩ 5. “holdable echoes”

***