In the City of X (on Barbara Guest’s “Photographs”)
We speak in photos now. What had been distance
may be memory but someone has taken the accident
and refracted it.
The sun lights the street lamp. The street lamp finds
the government building. The tree trees
until it closes. Memory is loss
whose fear of more loss releases the shutter.
A negative rises from whatever is stilled. A feather
can not play a violin
even in a walnut sitting room.
Emotions cycle in a clockwise manner.
Pause. Rewind. Play: In the city of X,
they pour genies into cameras.
Originally appeared online in Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, 2015
February Poem #2: The Calving
February calves
and turns the city
the color of ash. Every/
where is one glove. Every/
thing seeps. The pineapple chunk
picked from a Pyrex bowl in the fridge
tastes like a cold, thready sun
and the lone pulley of spring.
Originally appeared in Ghost Ocean Magazine, #14.
| Now available: “20,” my chapbook of erasure poems from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea out from Alternating Current Press. |
feature photo by: Sven Scheuermeier (unsplash)
Fevers of the Mind 