Triptych/Over/Under/Determined
Sand On This Parapet
Every step I take
Misplaces, deeper into
Self as singular not only
Something everyone has
And do they or do
I assume, like this heat
Assumes I recognize its
Journey from there
To here, halfway through
Its torrid toppling season
Says liminal like lime
Spells chocolate, tongue
Come to outdo every
Other part and parts way
For intense oblique incursions
Themselves resemble purling
Where presence throbs,
Wire and string in
Fascinating relation, mounted
On a pile of sand and
Titled “Transverse,” but until then
We’ll have to nod
Yes to exile, leave everywhere
You or you have ever been
And I will make some
We or will we split, self
Assert its contours like this
Hunch of hearsay and hard miles.
Title Change
Hard angles come apart in
My hands, outmoded armistice
Of war which still rages, but at a
Distance, off of TV and in some
Valley—some beautiful place
Encircled by mountains, and broken just
So by so many mountain passes.
Weirded Out
Rose whorl stems
Performance one can only call nature,
Call to the only tree for miles, call and
Cry to horizon, where air
Never lingers but one never
Feels rushed, nor taken for
Fool, sum of aloof clemencies
With clematis for vine; and when movement
Needs its rest, arrests of reds and
Blues will sail you
Down gallery determines you are
Dumb but not divine; but why
Be upset when this channel
Roils, rejuvenates even as no
Mile has been traversed, nor even
Inch, millimeter, nothing smaller
Remains: all you can do is
Say I live in a state and the statement
Can only be placeholder, going
Nowhere but beautifully gone.
Adam Strauss lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He has poems out in The Arsonist Magazine, Fence, Interimm, and The Brooklyn Rail. Poems are forthcoming in Spork. The work in this issue is from a manuscript titled No End To Beauty.
