Will

 

Unified: the woman in the choir. I will & not seek: inherit an ark & become meek. For you lurk when I am musically shy.  I pry open letters & await to retrieve the unspoken.  That unsaid woman of late hours brushes up against you like flowers.

 

To quote another takes confidence in my spell.  I sing out the Tao: a glimpse: meditation on the stars.  I see them all as points on a map, a blueprint of nights in hotels.  I, too, am choirboy & meek.  My sheets are filthy but my steak is lean.

 

During days, nights pass.  During nights, days loom.  I make note when blue is the evidence of what you do: one line out from the cornucopia.  Wood to the furnace.  The surface of your driftwood.  I quote the evidence, hard: the distorted word of waking.

Black Out

 

In this black outage (dim) I mourn the winds as wounds

fail to heal from turbulence to the hauling of cargo.

 

You mustn’t (turn) like a clock hand upon us, stab

Us with a dull objection. The flashlight only generates

 

Moors: the wet laughs of (nights) inside, the icy wires

blue as blueprints. Like a haphazard teenager

 

I desire to ask a question, but I refrain. I desire

To throw (wood) on a fire, but location is key, keys

 

Where we release fumes, fumes where (sky) mellows

With candy-coated ease. We are amidst an echo,

 

One voice, one way down the chimney. (Voice)

Of reasons, voice of the past echoing. (o, o, o)

 

You simmer like a kettle, in flame. Shudder &

Shimmer as sequin. But without (choir), with pane.

Bio: J. Michael Wahlgren is author of Valency (BlazeVox, 2010) & Silent Actor (Bewrite, 2008).  Recent work can be found in Matter Journal #12 as well as forthcoming work in Whiskey Island Magazine & Barn Owl Review.