Fiber Optics

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.