thirty-first state
If all tagalong creation insists on being
what it’s not, rocks dying to skip downhill and spread
out gravel at our feet, hurricane trees to fly
close, everyone caught in your photos to smile and
perform some realistic gesture, the sky to
empty itself all over your face, human feet
to grasp, throat meat so much to be the ticklish air
that threads its variable muscle clutch, and you
to be filled choke full with words ground together in
tectonic poems—and everything just aspires
to a moan—then this crunching must really be the
gravel begging beneath our feet. And if not, not.
—Evan Willner