Sprucing Our Wigs, Sadya and I Talk about Amulets, While I Contemplate Nothing

It is like this,
he says.
Although I think he’d rather not say.

They protect us                    from

everything
woman
curses, man jealousy

mean fun, mischief
of spirit-ghosts.

His words, like old eyes
skilled in silence,
bend against the light. I wait.

But there is only this
and him, fingering rainbow curls,
and me, plaiting confetti ones,
and, outside, the voices of those who’ve gathered

in this one vacant violent vastness.

:

It has been like this,
for ten minutes at a time
for years,
staring into a brass mirror,
waiting:

no calling
no creation

just a full-blown assault
of what does not exist.

Ten minutes later,
I look again.

:

We call          into existence

                                                                             things

                                              that do not

                                                                                                  exist,

he says much later,
indulgently,
like I’ve been caught admiring his
good-looking naked parts,
and he’s decided to be kind.

Out of nothing, there can be something.

I see, I say,
but I do not see.

:

Besides I don’t believe him.          (Have you ever been to the Valley of the

                                                        Weeping?)

It has to come from somewhere. (Everyone knows it was a wasteland. Some

                                                        holy man in the Bible said it was a wasteland.
                                                        It was a Wasteland.)

I don’t like what’s here to work with.     (But they got there, and found it
                                                                        flowing with springs.)

I want a different nothing.