Wednesday, November 2, 2011


Emotion Sickness


All wobbly all over —
it’s not so much vertigo
as an aversion to inversion. Carry on
kidding yourself it’s giddiness,
the bluff of your blood-
flow; some old neophobia.
The carrion you
forget to keep in mind, i.e.
the equation to your qualm, may be
in remembering the moment
of your memory,
however fractured that keepsake
has become — the closer
to broken the better though,
and confronting it by
donning a monocle helps
to make the ground
seem farther afield.
No need to be stable to drink
at this oblique
table. In oblivion
it’s easier being queasy any-
way, and damn near
impossible to assure
that certain bleak hauntings won't
see you stepping ashore, upside-
down the morning after,
a black-and-blue sea
hung over
the world.


(published in Snorkel, 2011)