Under-night

This smile sinks into my skin

like silver piercing the solstice

beyond my quivering blinds, dangling

like a tooth freshly threaded.

 

I don't know how to spin the earth

backwards, but each time I crack

a knuckle I pretend I'm shifting

gear by gear into anti-time.

 

And if I hold my breath between

my ribs as I try to decipher

the fossils in the ceiling, I can

almost taste the red within my gasp.

Reviews

[r. f. jordan]

nice alliteration in the opening, especially since s is such a sultry sound to sing with. i like the ambiguity of meaning in this piece, and the grammatical dissonance of opening a stanza with "And". the second stanza is a phenomenal rendition of a speaker struggling with the finite by overblowing influence. this certainly lends to the idea that you're on your way to laureatedom. nice work.