I look at paintings
I work on another poem
Agnes Martin made
with a ruler and pencil
and I think about
compulsory repetition
the grid as endgame
helpless entrapment
not a spiritual practice
or meditative lyric
but the mind’s limit
iterated constantly
I know she believed
satisfaction impossible
art is better hungry
but I remember how
before I became ill
I could open my mouth
I could eat without fear
I could be nourished
my lover could enter me
until illness entered me
and I desired nothing else
more deeply than health