Species
Sound’s gone now
Get those words out of your mouth and into your heart.
what’s locked in and gone now is
Lester’s crown—found to fit nothing well
O tunnel-fond is he knotted bright
gravity heating the blood and breath
star-like pox I thought to friend
and so you, Lester, are
that which I am fraught with
sound and sight of darkening song
awake and dead in the dreaming mouth /
Lester’s window words refract
puddles of sound / the pronouns I think
I have compounded in Lester
Species
O ghost pronoun no one fits that Lester is
Sound’s gone now
what shit substance am I or in
this bound unit, blood-gagged and badly crowned
Lester’s hot guts, blood and breath O
bleed and breathe you sonic image
what you are seen to say you are now
tell me friend who are you
locked in the tangent I’m lost on…
tradition… louder than song… more dark than mountain…
friend or fraught cog? that I could call you Matt
and be formed of that static I am
which is and been a long returning pull of dream of Lester
a thing I made to mourn for
Species
Lester—I am and have dream
have pulled “dust” out the dust there
Sound’s gone now
star-like coat I think formed in bright gravity
where we are, old friend? Now at our costumes’
song-bound tangent O now again away
and aware of this influence and tradition’s
the image in fluid—cup of drugs down open throat
my costume’s 100% coda, all palm fronds
and incanted vocab, all pronouns are mine
to bind and bend, make bombs and friends
make Lester dance when I’m drunk and fall down a lot
cause’ the gardens are shitty cause’ I dance on them
Species
O lovely ghost again coaxed out
this dream and haunting species
this trick song mimics (in magic) sounds real
Sound’s gone now
a unit bound in place in thinking it’s
like I am—I think and am placed
sweater-clad and 25 years, fatter than last
in January Colorado, cooking the laundry, mine
Lester’s blue under the scars, tequila-bright
slush under foot, gravity in the guts of costume
my liar’s heavy crown like nothing fits like a cog
in Lester like two fraught cogs in a bomb
were it easy, I’d fix me for a lover
but for me it’s not
Species
Lester’s throat and lilting quiver
therein—as an arrow goes—his voice
sonic image bound—song real handcuffs
on imaginary wrists the trick’s (in escaping) real
Sound’s gone now
wrists are what’s escaped there, reality!
a handy flashlight for the mountain dark
more dark than mountain and nothing saw Lester
a managed image of imagined absence
then Lester, now apparent in magic, went to it
I am ever my pronouns, their predominance
challenged and—I think—justified
fondled by moths in a sweater, clad so
25 years and not once seen my bones
Species
the arrow—shot—makes a mouth in the heart
where I speak and say nothing
of substance O wound invoked now
the fucking blood and fucking breath of Lester
takes an arrow to find I imagine
Sound’s gone now
bent in January spasm and cold
more dark than mountain, brighter than gravity
is the fear of death, our compound tangent, January Colorado
O slushy underfoot the blue-dark heart is
so harnessed by the binding chest
with what wire of mind I am
the memento mori now again some other skull
than someone else’s, then mine
Species
Lester’s that singing that I
assumed easy, and thought’s so taught me now
to close what ghosts breach in binding
and thin what signal those poems enclose
so finite’s the dusk. dust. what.
now tell me, Lester Lovely, what you think
Sound’s gone now
the trick is, Matt, to make real magic
to darken what is (is seen, is heard) from song
there is singing—sound and sight of Lester
as seer-bright fits of nearness played
on venom-white violins
the fear of death so poems are made
a harness the heart tricks on / song
Matt Truslow is a poet living in Fort Collins, Colorado. He thanks Sporklet for publishing these poems and you for reading.