One Poem - Connor Stratman

Facsimile I

i.

First it was history

then seismic

fingers in the ground

Now it’s electric books

and knitted clubs

How to posit a moment

and hold it still

or spit it like

our geography now determined

by spots of inky breath

Now what:

I don’t know

(nor act as knower)

The breath of godly love

            is speck of black

            stains

wrecked world of women

my other

            your disappearance

contained in cups

of cheapened water

            in the corresponding

                        holes of the sky

revise your meaning, please

ii.

film-firm surface

and insecured hands

I forget

to wonder

malicious steadiness

of

in-betweens

iii.

it’s your litany

that gets repeated

then thrown out

folded/crumpled

and wiped by the judge

The wince of begging:

acknowledged ownership

of the small scrap pile

they get something

done

like us luck struck

drawers of hall            ways

iv.

in the good minutes

after sunrise

wilted names lock

            on the walls

and call everything

something else

 --

Connor Stratman is a writer currently living in Chicago. His work has appeared in journals such as The Toronto Quarterly, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, ditch, Leaf Garden, Pinstripe Fedora, Otoliths, Counterexample Poetics, Scythe, and Little Episodes, among others. He edits the online poetry journal The Balloon. He is the author of a chapbook, invisible entrances (erbacce-press, 2010) and a full-length book of poems, An Early Scratch (erbacce, 2011).