Two Poems Tonometry

Such a tiny puff, a slight annoyance, a moment of noncontact, this legerdemain— what hocus pocus, what misdirection, with your chin in a cradle, a red dot centering itself on a hot air balloon? Hold still. Do nothing. Watch the dot. What’s the problem? the doctor asks. You have seen sap boiling out of trees. Rocks crack and split. Gulls implode mid-flight. The inside of your eye is under water at a high tide. He’s not listening. He’s not the least bit interested in what you’re saying. He’s the specialist reading the numbers as if your retina were the flat, dead floor of the ocean.

Floaters

Amoebas inside your eyes. Lava lamps dim, turn black and white. Jellyfish rise and fall against lacquered skies. An octopus squirts away, leaving its inky shadow behind. The glasses on the nightstand lose their power. To see is to be separated from the subject. To drive becomes more risk than reward always asking, Where? There? How close? The eye chart reveals mysterious messages in the examination room. When the doctor asks you to read line 3, the answer comes forth as if spelled by an unfamiliar voice, a message from a séance, from a theosophical text, a Ouija board: I C A N N O T

A. P. Walton