This modish hairstyle into this season.
Fog to sky. This boat, its tracks on the sea
gone. Each moment pulled away
by its hashtag. Patient
sunlight on this book, panting.
Passion into the passionless. Lesson
into rule into ruins. Scholarship
ironing its tie. The sugar of affection
into the weight of love. House,
house in which we can’t live
that consumes itself. The clouds
cinched in their bags. Worry into its warehouse.
People into population.
Prose and prose and prose,
but bleaching to something lighter
in like, deeper in love.
In light I find little to hold;
in light that moves too fast;
in light that stops at my skin;
in light that travels forever through nothing.
The dime novel dims.
Overt pathos. The passwords
oh-so-obvious.
Each light a hundred-watt, angry.
Pollyanna to Policeman.
The little legs in gin that walk
the evening warm.
What is in the moment, in a moment
expands. These leaves falling. A bucket
filled with rainwater. This minute
into this year. This thread
into this rope that rises into the sky,
apparently attached
to nothing.
Frank Montesonti is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Blight, Blight, Blight, Ray of Hope, Winner of the 2011 Barrow Street Book Prize chosen by D.A. Powell, and the book of erasure, Hope Tree (How To Prune Fruit Trees) by Black Lawrence Press. He is also author of the chapbook, A Civic Pageant, also from Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in journals such as Tin House, AQR, Black Warrior Review, Poet Lore, and Poems and Plays, among many others. A long time resident of Indiana, he now lives in Los Angeles and teaches at National University.