from Seated Figure with Red Angle (1988) by Betty Goodwin

If body is always deep but deepest at its surface.

If conditionals are of two kinds factual and contrafactual.

If you're pushing, pushing and then it begins to pull you.

If police in that city burnt off people's hands with a blowtorch.

If quite darkly colored or reddish (bodies) swim there.

If afterwards she would sit the way a very old person sits, with no pants on, confused.

If you reach in, if you burrow, if you risk wiping in.

If a point that has been fed over years becomes a little bit alive.

If the seated figure started out with an idea of interrogation.

If there was a quality of very strong electrical light.

If you had the idea of interrogation.

If interrogation is a desire to get information which is not given or not given freely.

If buried all but traceless in the dark in its energy sitting, drifting within your own is another body.

If at first it sounded like rain.

– Anne Carson (2001)