Face
her face like smoke, like all day having to take a shit and something keeping you from it late afternoon smeared with one swift trill of birdsong and then farther off, a wave lapping gently against some other part of afternoon. and the seesaw thinking that shifts flowers back and forth, a simple arrangement, one letter mistaken for another, the face he should not see when he closes his eyes but does
Truth
Read this quickly and tell me the truth think of the first word and its antonym think of the antonym of the antonym the first person makes an enemy of the third they go back to the second stand there accusing each other but it doesn’t end there years later they barely recognize one another are you happy? are you telling the truth?
Men
men who talk to girls in crowded hallways just before the bell rings, because it’s safe at that time, but also a little risky. men who sit down with an open book in a library, not doing anything really, their eyes restless though, and watching. men who could die watching. like a knot in a tree, which measures time differently and thus watches differently, seeing whatever we see but something beyond or within that, a clotted sort of looking with too many people inside
Qualms
I don’t doubt that he’s right, but the thing of it is… the thing of it is that he plods too heavily so heavily that it hangs there each step of the way in all the little blanks and pauses, the thing that he is and that’s what’s giving me qualms, not his hair, not the bookshelf, not anything you could really put your finger on, but it wouldn’t surprise me
Dark
each wave with a counterfeit shimmer a bit of moonlight passed off as the real thing dagger covered in fake blood drawn out of real flesh letters that curl up and die before reaching the lips and through the tall grass and the thickening dark “do not awaken” written in haste