give us the runway & we will
lift the world

you will have many agreeable surprises
they said, the moment I placed
my name where their fingers had
been, or right after
instructing me to take off
my shirt & pants & put on
a pair of briefs that weren’t
mine    I didn’t know who
these belonged to, or who
had worn them before I put
my legs between each opening
they advised me to stay

out of the sun
you’ll get too brown, you’ll look too
what’s the word    brown I bit
my lip    he shook his gut &
removed a camera from a kind
of holster & laughed    I wondered
what my first surprise would be or if I’d be
dead before the first shot, the way
I’d always imagine myself later
clenching on command, arrested in the act
of motion, or mimicking
an emotion I didn’t know
a thing about (they gave directions)

arranged for the camera only to be
disassembled after the photographs
were taken, my temporary gaze
produced photographs that are
copies without originals

hearing our first words as though they were
whispered in my ear
I stayed out of the sun all summer
thinking about my next surprise
& when it’d come    I came up
fast, they said I was some sort
of natural, at least when I was being
recorded   I worked the day & the night
worked me through & through
three deadlines, half a dozen proofs, staring
again, dead-eyed with the news
room of others merging
into a screen we’d been
assigned upon employment    place
an article here, remove an unnecessary
interjection there, pretend to have
pleasure in the manipulation
of image & text, set to
scale & strict measurement   (the difference
between reading & seeing
is not always evident) & so was I
sometimes forgetting
where I was or what time
of day, whether to be
an object or its author
what more to make
of the experience, words
& skin & sensation
in every touch & breath & scent like
God & the toothbrush

good teeth are the making of the stomach
& beautiful teeth are the making of a
charming smile

what my agent would often
write to me, before he signed
his emails before
we had access to each other’s
migrant exchanges
all summer long as I stayed
out of the sun    tried my best
to look like anyone
else but a halfie, child
of two immigrants, son
& the holy spirit beside me
always when I prayed in bed
face-down & bent shut
my eyes & turned
the light switch off
to stay still, feeling
my heartbeat like repeating
dashes of a morse code
I myself could not explain

he may or may not
wear socks, he has always been known
as a daring dresser
they were fond of
saying, as I would walk
in late from a fitting, the request
to take polaroids for a go-
see later that afternoon    everywhere
telephones rang & everyone
seemed to speak at the same time
as though they were the chorus
in rehearsal I would try to
write down spare details, moments that I could
fashion into something else
when I had the time, or when the time
was right, when I was older, when I could
understand what it was I was doing or what it was
that was being done
to me    not much to it
-erations, the way a frame
can crack just by putting
weight on one foot, pressing
hard & raising one’s leg

these liberties will be looked upon no longer
as crimes, but as itches

& another memo when I think
to refresh my display

would you please also send a clear photo of your head
which you can alter freely, at will or willingly
disposed to give up your rights to like
-ness? instead of representing my likeness, I
took steps toward excising my face
from the portrait, replacing it with

        please note, visitors
        may enter & leave
        the theater at any time

(it revealed the desire to renounce
individual authority in his work
undermining the sanctity
of authorship)    imagine

to be looked at from
the other side of the screen
with one thumb close to
almost an hour

touched by the hand
of God, new order
blaring in the back
of the bar   I paid
attention, took my own
hand out from my jeans
pocket, put my thumb
around it, felt how it felt to
feel it almost as if
I were inside it & on
the outside

against such official efforts to fix
identity, he insisted on the right
to construct, subvert, or other
-wise destabilize it, already
experimenting with what it meant
to flatten dimensions, a response
to the flattening of transport
in a culture constantly dis
-placed     some people