A Body in Labor

is a verb composed entirely of tenses
tensions and tents
                        recast as curtains
                                   in the windows of the accidental railroad town
attenuations:
                     the freighted car quivering down the tracks taking the future with her

It’s not really a language
it’s a way of live.
                     Foreman’s burly grimaces = ponga la férrea aqui
                     Foreman’s burly grin = éso, cabron!

Foreman’s foreplay: drafted maps,
                                    provisional timetables coffee stained and folded
                                                            on the nightstand by the metal bed

A Body in Labor
is a verb composed entirely of contracts
                       You grandmother giggling:
                       Some of us got caught

A Body in Labor is a translator
busy loading scrap metal into waiting cars
28 lbs at a time
                                assembly line dancing
                                whistling lunch pail
                                your immigrant grandfather

Now you are being directed to a site of authentication.
                       I is no I there.

Translation demands consistency
Whatever you say on a satellite phone
will be mimed by the planets in slow motion
afterwards for years.
Repetition and recollection:
the same movement    but in opposite directions

Baron Hungerford (who wasn’t really a baron, in the traditional sense of the word)
named the three insouciant towns Edna, Louise and Inez because his three
daughters stayed at home in France.
They never grew up.

Translation Theory:
one body in labor is equal to all other bodies in labor             separate but equal
provided each body is laboring equally                                 is producing equal
numbers of products
in any given interval.

Fatigue is a collapsing box
of temporary placeholders,
I is no I there
Pain derives its meaning from reference points
the seconds between contractions
the dry spots between water drops
        little squeezes in between memoranda,
but as general, one doesn’t remember
much.

Post is a great example of a reference point.
            Love does not alter when it alteration finds.