By Glenn Ingersoll
Things in their poses
I heard nothing.
I stood among the things.
I stood within hearing.
I stood beside the origin of the noise.
I stood with the lost things, the things put aside, things shivering without jackets in the wind.
I stood, thereby upright.
Nothing came by.
Nothing heard my position.
Nothing caught the news of my steadiness.
I didn't walk or dance, though I was not unmoved.
I stood up under the pauses between hurts as though they weren't tender themselves.
I sighed but that was just breathing.
I heard things, I confess.
Though nothing with meaning assigned.
I stood out among the silence as obstacle, visibly allowed.
I sighed but without affect.
The things were in their poses.
I stood similarly.
There yet
We are here in the place of others.
We are in place, cited, noted, pointed out.
A thing is falling, something approaches, what follows is its shadow.
This which is gives way and shifts left.
I have a nail and would sleep if I could among the pins.
A needle touches a record and enters.
Asleep remains and awake closes slowly as the cake gives out, as the people keep drinking.
Stars on the far side of dust, light caught and broken.
If you're still, you'll stir.
There's no absence moving into place, merely an ill fit.
What opens fills with teeth, voice.
Becoming, isn't it? or disturbed, so'll settle over the years.
Blanket, blank, blah. It. What? Sh.
We are there yet.
Sounds like
What is the answer?
Yes, we can, sir.
No, we can’t, sir.
Either sounds like cancer.
Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California. His reading & interview series, Clearly Meant, is currently on covid hiatus. The epic prose poem, Thousand (Mel C Thompson Publishing) is available from bookshop.org, and as an e-book from Smashwords. He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Recently writings have turned up in New Note Poetry, Mercurius, and Unlikely Stories.