Fume Lapse
(Jan-June 2022)
In Fashion
5:52: a pigeon with a leaf hat. Air raid signal at Target. Long-haired elders in camo. No, the other shade of camo.
Telescopic Philanthropy
Language pays it forward, I steal it backward. Summer fog travels downwards, real estate upwards. Please disregard my texts from last night.
A Morning Adventure
15 minutes on one page, clicking on letters with my eyelash. Best burpless mega fatty delivery capsules. I follow the Roomba in my mind.
Quite At Home
Days commuting into each other. Historical light declines to a Rainforest Cafe mist. Blueish tint of glass in the 90s. (The actual 90s).
Covering a Multitude of Sins
You’re one to speak. On command, but whose. This parking garage pagoda: “It’s kind of a god’s god.”
Signs and Tokens
Firehose in an ornate dumpster. MoMa de Chao (Automania). “Mystic, poet, jester” (an ad).
Our Dear Brother
You’re the sophist’s sophist, I’m the whelp’s whelp. Fog drains between us as we sleep.
On the Watch
Overhanging trees holding shadows. Outside my window: “I’m drained. I’m drained. I’m drained.”
A New Lodger
Commercial sub-basement Ascot boutiques. “Yep: Lobster.”
Sharpshooters
What I mean is, the akashic has spoiled, and I’m irrationally afraid of the Dekalb stop. Footsteps at my back. Platform crocs in the heart of empire.
The Ironmaster
It’s like they’re replacing the apeiron, but with what? Look: a men’s health sprinkler system. A teacher’s miserable lanyard.
The Young Man
Revision’s dapple pulses back through the story, decaying sentiment. You know that look when you see it. A history of Loveless acts.
Nurse and Patient
I’m an operative in a diner booth. I am getting therapy on a bench in a corporate plaza, watching the soup timelapse on the smashed MTA wifi hub. Say it together: Loop. Lime. Asps.
The Appointed Time
“If you see something say something.” But how will I know what to say when it appears?
Interlopers
A Romantic period face, a troubadour period face. A gull asleep in the snow.
A Struggle
Days of the desire to discuss ingredients collapsing; frameworks dissolve in an incoherent middle. A couple of gulls ask for a picture. My phone dies when I photograph the sun.
National and Domestic
O sunflowers caged at the patriotic florist’s. Crisis actor at the outdoor dining structure, spot of Hellman’s on his cheek. O the grove this city’s indoor figs could make.
The Letter and the Answer
You said I don’t know how to celebrate the moment, but fireworks seem like the easiest gesture until you see them.
In Trust
“It’s a big nothing and everybody works at it.” Right!
Stop Him!
Vestigial futures dangle, and the vines too, they dangle. Failsons, subject to random search.
Closing In
Airborne concentrations of steel, manganese, chromium. “The world is right here.”
Dutiful Friendship
Poetry, like the internet, like poetry, is where I debase myself to preserve these things, but for who?
Enlightened
The forest that burnt down in highschool is adolescent now, my dad sends a pic. I forget to respond. Nintendo Music That Calms Your Mind When It’s Raining to Relax and Study To.
Obstinacy
Refusal to hold the handrails, stumbling every time the train stops. Of those to whom special thanks is given, special thanks shall be required.
The Track
The dawn bickers with each corner’s stash of shadow. The outsourced passion of relenting. I’m happy for all your actualizing.
Springing a Mine
Everything true is written in another document, which drains into this one as we sleep.
Flight
The sweat stains on the banker’s back are angel wings. That’s nice, but tread carefully, for dreams are an emerald: reversible.
Pursuit
The thing is, so much noise is being canceled here, one could almost quote unquote scream OKAY. As if on cue it would begin.
A Wintry Day and Night
Also, the man with foot rot’s whispered song sounds like my name. Tonight the ruby will visit me.
Perspective
At the testing site I’m sensed by the sanitizer station, my hands overflow with it, what accrues in being dispensed.
A Discovery
Guilt is time directed inwards, which is why it is described as a weight.
Another Discovery
10,000 cratefuls of lavenders pressed in the hole of my phone.
Steel and Iron
Foreground golden buildings, Big Gulp, background rainclouds, sunset, circumflex beads.
Beginning the World
“The poem on the following slide is sad.”
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JOSHUA WILKERSON is the author of Meadowlands/Xanadu/American Dream and the co-editor of Beautiful Days Press and the journal Works & Days. Recent or forthcoming work can be found in Annulet Poetics, New Mundo, Noir Sauna, and Volume Poetry.
