Ali Beheler
CARVING A LYRIC OUT
at first
you will need
a body, its losings
to time, and your
hands, a tool in each—
hammer, chisel—
or just one
holding a bench knife—
and beyond this, where
the Möbius strip of your skin
turns inward on itself,
the outside becoming
the inside, covered,
a trace, an imprint, a having been there
some call an idea
not yet in full flesh—a buried-
so-long, a reaching
that feels for itself
in the mirror
of wood or stone,
lifting up layer on layer
of long-dead leaves,
year after year cast off now
as so many shavings
the thumb flicks
ahead of the knife’s edge and down,
or crashing through waves
of solid back to mineral gas,
percussing with the hammer
millennia of pressure, of heat,
into flakes that fly
off the stone’s steady form and down,
digging out, subtracting, taking away
the time
that obscured the center’s intensity
that the shape of that desire
finally freed and staring back
at itself staring at its own
stone or wooden face
(what mirror, what page)
in form for the first time
was hiding inside—