JOSH FOMON

from THOUGH WE BLED METICULOUSLY 

Inexplicably we are mouthing              the law of the innocent. 

              The fluxom hearts excised from our wounds. 

                                                         The mythology is that my head remains
                            stuck and porous. As wind unwinds I feel 

the world shape                           into parsable mechanics of words.

The whole damn bleating.

                                          Toss the opening stitch                       into a river

gather the effulgent cool.                                     This is a prayer to the Book of Perspicuity

                                                                      of hand pressed against.

from THOUGH WE BLED METICULOUSLY 

               For here she said for here
a rippling gesticulation
                into distinct spires.
Nominative portions the falling

breaths.        The yellow and the rain
she said        the inflection                   
of the body altogether.

from THOUGH WE BLED METICULOUSLY 

An incessant motion to connect she said to connect we need a door she said to observe a loop around the self encompassed in another self equally enormous. She said standing outside we became greener—a layer of frozen wisteria—ghosts imbued in tones curved into each other’s cheekbones. She said the unfolding and recoil she said pacing the memory away. No need to create perfection. Observant I watched the silence boundary our privation—the terms sacrificing my identical cruelty. Alone—I said scatter absolve as a wreath tumbling in snow. The callous toil of perfection to make myself an entrance. Scattered indifferent catastrophe she said the semblance against she said the love we need.

from THOUGH WE BLED METICULOUSLY

(The morning opened outward like two palms
separating a virtue.
There were tonally two birds surrounded
by hundreds of onlookers, a tree
on fire yet yearning to be halved.
(The changing face
of a rested moon.) A fury of splinters
strewn on the ground like lackadaisical
despair. This is how the air ends. Toiled
with fresh forests the rain
just before fissure.
(There are motes of collapse,
a silence still promised.) Then a deer
emerged from the pit in my chest.

Originally from Iowa City, Josh Fomon lives in Seattle and edits the art journal Depaser. His poems appear in Caketrain, jubilat, alice blue review, pallaksch. pallaksch., Deluge, Yalobusha Review, and others. His book THOUGH WE BLED METICULOUSLY is forthcoming from Black Ocean in spring 2016.