MIKE LALA
| Walked a hallway of the constant shifting commons |
| someone called the present the future |
| as they glided past gilt-framed mirrors |
| divergent whole |
| Lines |
| of decisions' other selves' paths through history |
| each possibility's end points to possibilities (again) |
| and each fragment, modeled, urchin, model |
| organism, builds a covering exo in silence, its |
| principle, carbon conversion via nickel to chalk |
| They |
| looked for a quenching, took salt from the water |
| everything racing toward hardness |
| fell into a cast; possibility, held |
| out; billions of chittering, oblivious anacreons |
| Each | Caught |
| moment appearing | |
| a repetition | |
| up in blind reproduction | |
| couldn't stop | |
| lingered, continued, water over salt-battered ( ) | |
| silence | |
| like money, rose up | |
| there lay | |
| scattered, the longest of their | |
| days | |
| one by one, hiding, holding out, hardening | |
| hiding, holding out, hard |
| I |
| have not escaped analogy |
| pronoun or analogue |
| agnate among peonies |
| figure or hourglass |
| reason or will |
| extracted |
| like gas |
| fall into |
| formlessly |
| lapse |
Mike Lala is a poet and performance writer living in New York City. He is the author of The Unreal City (Tupelo Press, 2023), Exit Theater (Colorado Prize for Poetry, 2016), and several chapbooks, including Points of Return (Ghost Proposal, 2023).