Word For/ Word: A Journal of new writing

Kevin McLellan

Faux Republique

my blood is irritable
or rather these

contaminated words:
will not speak:

your mouth
a rictus of pain:

lineaments surface
as if for ablution

in the wake
of this morning:

we built
a cardboard village

A man called one field

Remnants of a sentence: evidence
of a missing feeling: my fleeting
shadow: the smell of these trampled
dandelions: I place bitter stem to tongue:
blow the snow flower away

and make a wish: and like the succession
of the alphabet we are connected:
but where is he: I ask
because my mouth no longer quivers
around the letter O

Morning, Morning

All the closed doors. Men

do not enter. Where is
the doorknob? Waist high.

All men have been
distant. This. Where is

my body? Shapeless

distances near. Shapeless
distances are next to

my heart. All mornings

confirm this. All birds
outside my window.

Itinerary

i.            THE CAPTURE

happens after desire

goes full tilt full
              circle goes past

desperation after

              a stranger comes
and offers

bulls eyes and arrows
              and imperfection

ii. THE ENCOUNTER


              a hunter and the hunted one
picnic on fruit salad

on both borders of say Niagara Falls

              and "We" and
              for worse territories

ripen alongside better ones

iii.              THE SEQUEL


a mouth

a half moon
where an astronaut
refuses to land

a tongue
where one hundred thousand craters
hold an inarticulate

an age old secret
lurks and whirs
but meanwhile an outside force
say a breeze
intensifies slightly
intermittently

Parse

In a constant state of impend
you believe youre prophetic
but everyone dies:

you thwart by lionizing Halcyon
when youve only read about
the gamut of personal detritus
known by a certain few as parallax:

if youre able to recognize
from the outside in
you can either visit or pan for gold: