They’ll Know What to Do

Your limbs know every role they’ve played:

they know from first to last where they have been

and what you made them do and what they made

you do and what their grand relation is

to that strange trick you call your consciousness.

You are more real to them than they are to the thing

you think is you. And yet today the thing you think

you are awoke inclined, resigned, consigned

to welcoming some new alignment with those arms

and legs and thumbs, big toes, and wrists and knees

and ankles, elbows – you got the news: you’re theirs

more than they’re yours. You are their fact; they’re

what you use: the dream components of your next

collective contrapposto pose of sex and art:

the props of your next act. They and you repose

in one shared certainty: your sole available resort

is to react. You’ll react as usual: factitiously,

enacting fantasies – to which they have been long

exposed. They’ll know what to do with those.

.