Poet Joshua Clover and 11 Students May Face Prison Time

Fiber Optics
by michael rutherglen

Trace this portrait
as it strobes

to the screen:
bone-flecks

out of Longview,
Texas by way of

Palo Alto, Los
Angeles, assembling

an incisor above
an upcurved

too-red rim:
bit by flickering

bit: a smile,
overbite

on a filter-
tip, the upper

lip lagging
milliseconds

in Houston:
pupils between

Oakhurst and
Lisle: an iris,

flash-lit, dim-
inished pine-

green now west
of the stockyards:

veins in Des Moines
meshing

to her blush shot to
the lens that night

through the sudden shine.
Trace it back:

past light-pulses,
switches ticking

nearly neural time:
to the frontal

lobe from your
fingertips tracing

her backbone to the root,
before she

bit your tongue,
lit on a network

and blazed all
the distances in you.