N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 0 9

MICHAEL ROTHENBERG

Simplify Infinity

Rain slaughters the balcony

I’m invisible

Flowers blown off red skeletons

I’m describing my death

My mother tells me come inside

But there’s nothing inside worth imagining

It’s all outside

Starlings in confusion

Where the body is purified by danger

July 14, 2001

[“Simplify Infinity” in Choose, Selected Poems of Michael Rothenberg, Big Bridge Press, 2009, originally appeared in a chapbook, Monk Daddy, Blue Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the author.]