After the step I assumed
was last was another.
One explains
the sum of color.
Deciduous images
smuggled from sleep.
Now of these
two, pick one, and from
these four, pick three,
says the cuck.
In quicksand—as
with trompe l’oeil—
slapstick chucks peril. Breathe
through your tongue.
We’ve been here before,
you don’t know it yet.
You, me, plankton
protein whipped
by the storm
to the shore.
what surprised you about the composition of this poem?
The sensation of palpating ground with your foot to confirm you have indeed reached ground after descending a flight of stairs in the pitch dark—I wanted to write into whatever you might call the precise inverse of this feeling. I realize only now that behind (or perhaps hovering above) the poem’s structure is a ghost form of couplets: a left and right foot ascending/descending. This is the titular poem of a manuscript in progress; this poem is among the last I wrote for it.