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Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Nate Maxson Implores Your Paper Moon in the Radiating Summer not to Fold Like a Failed Polaroid

A Brief History Of The Eventual

The blood-smell does so excite us
Following it in infrared through skyless forests
Unknown animals: thee and thou, me and you, king and queen, ditch and spring

Just to be sure, I’ll be obvious about my intentions

There are witches beneath the frozen Earth
Their veins shot out like the roots of gnarled Lilacs
We dreamed
Or vice versa
Sirens/ swans
Songs
Fell from storms like slow winters
First I walked barefoot through the weeds
And then the forest grew,
Twisted higher than ashy Eden
Whose wounds I chronicle as reductions to ultraviolet night

Those of you listening through these veils of wire and time discontented
Let me see
Your paper moon
Like I did the first time,
Brighter than the protest of a thousand howling pyres




Heartland, Age 12

The cornfields we used to steal from,
A few ears at dusk

I remember
How cold the rain was

The end of summer
Radiating
Like a dark green river dreaming




Wingspan/Post-Flight Measurements

A vast act of remembrance, this
The Blizzard Forever, 1989 to 2017 (so far)

You hardly notice
The wingspan spreading overhead
I assume
A deliberateness to the motion

Dark water in small amounts
That’s your vaccination
Against exposure kid, against the cold
Folded like a failed polaroid

It could be a dream
I’m in conversation with
But whose?
There’s no great comfort
In the sterile clockwork mathematics of all this
Of course the machinery could be perfected eventually
But it’s less interesting than leaving the grit inside to eat up the gears
I prefer to think in terms of catastrophe, in terms of thirst
A choral ode, a downturn: saltwater in a moon-white teacup
Mistaken for light and sipped with a civilized grimace
Whatever it is that makes you feel better
The etymology will be painfully obvious
Most of the time I measure it in dents and bruises
Compared to the last crash landing
What heals tallied next to what doesn’t
Except on some dusks when I am spectral, uninhibited and wounded
X-rayed till I hiss:
Dancing slow in the thinning shade alone
This way
The divide
Before it disappears,
Before a world begins

A déjà vu is etched in sudden snow


Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry including 'The Whisper Gallery' and 'The Age Of Jive", he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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