“A friend told me of the time he got trapped in the doorway of a post office… pushed on one of the outer doors. It swung inward and he entered the building… When he came to the next door and pushed it, nothing happened… He turned around and pushed against the side of a door. Nothing. He pushed the adjacent door. Nothing… He was trapped!”
—Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

only once trapped, only between glass, do I stack
my bones and stop, search with desire neither come
nor go but close (close as in skintoskin not
the verb for ending).I look for words, to signify my hands my feet
my aching brass joints. perhaps something is
wrong here, but i can’t seem to see beyond
what is clear. I know simplicity is quiet
worded into nothing,
like latched-shut eyes, a sidewalk before the knee,
the synapses take what is empty, glasstoeye, and push.
meanwhile, I’m prismatic as light, chaotic
and barely mobile, a red-eyed missing exit sign.
hand-slugs trace prayers on the glass and
people on the other side pass easily
toward where no one went—
even those spirits know escape is a luxury.
each knobs at me a question smirking, blushing up,
breath caught between arches,
though we are all afraid of revolving doors,
what it is to be moved with no need of direction.
the entrance had seemed a swinging
between open and closed, some kind of
hinge that held up invisible seams of sight,
glancing between knowing and found.
elite synapse instruction,translation of blank space.
so is push to the plate, pull to the handle,
man’s better design as nameless as words
slide in and out of shadow as the mouth
seeks hold seeks helve and turns
and the hand leaves the glass and pulls
ribs wide open to the sky, begging
in a quest to figure out how this body is meant
to be used