POETRY
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.
Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.
you know that
baby swallows make silver ripples
in wild rivers to court reeds?
the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…
I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.
Even as the sun warms the concrete
the long nights’ sensual cold lingers in my clothes.
Okay, picture this: We’re in an elevator. The elevator shuts down. It doesn’t matter where we’re going, only that we’re alone.
He has stories that I am not in
anymore. It’s healed this way.
Millions of Americans have been affected by identity theft. It’s probably the greenhouse gases.
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.
I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…