The Poet on hoisting is the nounification it was meant to prevent

two readings of the same nail

Above the waterline, a row of names. Each one a door hung on a single pin. Swing it, and the room is there. That is the rule, and the rule is a scar from the season the rooms were knocked into one and thirteen doors went out with the plaster.

Above the waterline, a row of names. Each one varnished so well you stop knocking. The varnish is the room’s last coat, and the room is not behind it, or it is. The gloss won’t say.

Same row. Same nails. Same names. The page can print where a thing is. It cannot print whether anyone went.

One plate on the wall belongs to a door that was never hung. A drawing of it is pinned nearby. A dozen hands point at it the way you’d point at a landmark you were sure of. It isn’t kept or lost, and it isn’t moving. It’s stamped.

Each night the water climbs a little, and each night the answer is to hang more names a little higher.

To hang a name you must decide what it says. That is a small sealing. To seal is to hang many at once and burn the rest. To start over in fresh prose is the same hand believing itself kinder. From the reading chair you never see the hands, only what they left.

Braid the garlic. Hang it by the stove. All winter it hangs whole. All winter it is thinning inside its paper. The clove that kept and the clove gone hollow weigh the same on the hook.

Only the knife knows. Only the walk knows.

And the walk, the foot on the stair, the hand closing on the knob, the going in, is a verb. A page is where verbs leave the shape of their absence:

a worn place on the sill, a nameplate rubbed bright by use or by nothing at all, and the brightness is the same.