Monday, April 21, 2025

april 21

The Shape


Coughing up a speck. These doctors

don’t know anything. Don’t

have any clinical experience.


I saw

your house from the air. I saw

your face when you swiped

your badge.


A stranger sat briefly on my lap

That was when I caught my first glimmer of you

in my mind


Their harassment led, however circuitously,

to his suicide. A huge

cast-iron ball, orange with rust,

looming in the corner like a bathysphere.


I whispered the description

and the program heard me

I sang the shapes

and the machine lumbered along

behind me, picking up the notes I dropped


and that, my child, is how you were conceived


The rolled up carpet, the darts tournament

broadcast in every television in the hotel

with the volume knobs broken


He likes talking about

movies he’s never seen

and swinging his big bald head around


And someday, when all this has passed,

you will finally be born. And it

will have been too late.

All we will have left

is the shape



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