What if Some Day or Night a Demon *
Darkness or truth Silence of dark Tall and alone Grows Taller Grows Deeper Grows space Between stars Soaks timelines Fugitive straining to hold Witnessing a still death Frozen mid-night Crystalline adrenaline cloud Breathing a still life Slab of floor Toes cold-shocked Closer Reaches Close Black lacquered caul Bare skin Electricity Palpitating blinks Shadow scent devours Slippery silhouette Glitching corridor Silence. Dark. True. Alone. *"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more'..." - Friedrich Nietzsche , the Gay Science TO CLOCK III. Clocking In Clickclick Click; Second hand soldiers compile unemployed minutes The solstice wind's evening shift begins Towers fill with Punchpunch-ing, Punchpunch-ing In the catacombs leaf spotted scrolls stir, anxious to flare a finger snap II. Clocked Rotating seasons remain on schedule, force-fed Doomed to forever in all directions until the paradox and nonsense of saying: it obeys; it counts; it moves; strikes like flint hitting steel, cracks open dead brush, ignites, and once flaming sets a blaze incalculable I. Clocking Out Breathe-take and spill sacred formality on the last. clean. day. Think about building a black hole planet; Sphere eating sphere within a coal dust stained marble mantle Step off the curb of Kentucky, hot iron poker in hand Land on the bluegrass of a universe perpetually remade to the tune reductio ad infinitum and determined to bend you until you break oceanic feeling we come on, hips synching palm to palm slapping skirts skimming thighs; shoulder to shoulder bioluminescent wings ripple celestine dew we're black onyx vibration and fiery sirius glittering; a scorching signal shore to shore we're unidentified aerial disco balls waxing, rainbow waves cresting, hear us kinetic spinning roar after roar, come on we're deep wells rising, spilling salty selenite froth-faced embracing foot after foot tumbling satin and sandy gypsum, silica stars mirroring voice after voice, come on, all dancing all breathing body over body arms outstretched, reach out we're two feet off the ground hearts thudding, we're the sound come on, come on we'll carry we're the lift up and dive we burn bright and roll all flooding all we're the come on come on, we're happening Bio: E. Samples is an Applachian cocktail poet; one part West Virginia Mountain Blue ink, two parts Kentucky Bluegrass Black ink, and a generous dash of Tennessee Red-inked Whiskey. She lives in the sweet corn stacks of Southern Indiana. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Still: The Journal, Soliloquies, Abridged, Re-Side, Variant Lit, The Loch Raven Review, Black Bough Poetry, Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020 Anthology, Crêpe & Penn, The Cabinet of Heed, Lucent Dreaming, Plainsongs, Kissing Dynamite PUNK Anthology, Feral, Capsule Stories, and elsewhere. She's on twitter @emilysamples
