living sculpture


i don’t understand all of this but you are a palindrome for i & because of this i am up in the middle of the sky with a pair of topiary shears, turning the clouds into so many inorganic shapes. i am in the sky taking out my eyes and gluing them to your shadow. i am in the sky, without eyes. i am in you like serious & stuffing the clouds with moss. i am throwing clouds everywhere. these are still clouds, but, yes, i have covered them with inorganic stained glass, ok? what else am i supposed to do, while you attract all of that light? it isn’t that love is complicated, but that we are called human beings. it isn’t that i am in the sky, but i am. i am in the middle of the sky as the stained glass light topples toward the earth and onto your shadow, the one to which my eyes are glued. i don’t understand all of this but you are a palindrome for i.




kindling


write your name on fire

and forget everything


these days

it’s impossible

not to be jealous

of a prism


for the safety of those

around you please return

to an elemental state


levitate

your hesitations

spray paint

your third eye

embrace loosely

connected notations


this is the 21st

century you are almost

made of neon

light


all of the blood

in your body

is extra

celestial making

you: infinity


light everything

on fire and forget

your name     here



hold it in until you burst


if diamonds travel through the blood

stream swallow the moon immediately


compare the lungs of a whale

to the size of your psychic debt


the respectful thing to do is make

the disappointing choice like the human

meat you’ve always been


o beatific lump of confusion

sadness is still blue even in the black

emptiness of space in the tight room of death


floating above the initial hurt

we are never overlooked by mistakes

nor the color of boredom


by accepting the weight of limitation

you’ve lost the ability to be tree to be light


the quality of the universe is mediocre

and i am the wrong thought every time

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M.G. Martin is the author of One For None (Ink, 2010). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Powderkeg, Juked, iO, ZYZZYVA, Sink Review, PANK, and from Greying Ghost Press. He teaches middle school and lives on Maui with the poet, Tess Patalano and the dog, Ihu. You can find him here and here.

Ryan Francesconi

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