The fist comes down upon the table
and the scatting, echoing, marauding clang
bumps and lurches about the steel room—

the table holds,
tho’ it’d rather sink to the knees,
and the mice feel small amid the balloon.

I take my time and draw in a breath—
& before the intake reaches the zenith
the fist comes down again on the table—

great trumpets bursting! great trumpets belching!
eardrums drumming & drumming & drumming!
a cosmic boom searches for landing within my sinews

and finds it—
I hold my throat steady with one hand
& signal namaste against my forehead

& cross my legs once—
& cross my legs twice
& scribble a note on the yellow pad

but how can I, on this leaping planet
land the note between fist and table
long enough for the fist to read it?

Roar! Rumble! Morose! Oh God!
The steel walls shimmy with tiny tin rockets
drenching and dousing my ear bones to pieces

the fist is leaden and set on it’s focus
and I am so small, so tiny, so worthless
this table is sinking and I am slipping

the mice are ticking and the walls are
clocking the chair will soon shatter and bear
me henceforth under the contents of iron floors

and that fist will be there
when all else is gone, holding and holding and
holding on

to thick humid air, full of glass
crushed into needles by that ironlike grasp
I am the table, I am the mouse

I am the creature that slinks into slouch—