Tony Mancus
QUIET INSIDE US IS THE SPELL
woolly things make good form, a forum
what you say for hearing, some built beds
and others badlands out of crushed velvet
others still a pier that jettisons your folding body,
the tack of gum-soled shoes told feelings
before saturday morning began with great pain
one time i heard a gunshot
and sawed my hand
went missing
one time i built a saw
out from a branch
of trees, the sun crooked
in all their teeth
my face forgot itself in
a lake and so what
winter, there’s no use
washing all the pillow cases,
they’re holding other headstills now,
proving no cloth keeps
our privates holed in all the polaroids
burning on windowsills
across each state lined with flurries
of email, absence, tyrant-quit cigarettes
and steamers full of broccoli
furniture is not an age of change
an agent neither does one mistake
for what one makes whole
rainshowers collapse into waterstains
two stories down
it takes a volume problem
takes a level, bubble sprung
force and the locus of hands
in deep pressment to shot-clip this scene
one thousand first thoughts
and a lamp to rub
swell with wishes,
to rust out the machine