Hedge
was fiddling with a bike chain in a sunset
in the snow of a performing arts center
in 2011 I saw a movie in Union Square
cascade on my arm the bread and circus
the Franco years a borderline profile in wheat
death exculpates your advertisement
of eclipsed ideation slipped in burned
up paper tips vents a classical apathy
a desiccate organ for neo pagans in the suburbs
their basement synths in retrospect columns
arpeggiate on the undersides of vexation
as devastating earthworks
blank millions they died
if u don’t call them a terrorist
This Printed Type
a pile of hotel linens that grain smelling of hairs
intentions (some thieving) and exchanges built
I edited your poem to the least comfortable silence
no one stands the real thing, or is made to
grumpy leftovers of the cotton ball and
obliterated cement. a foreground falls
in lighting blocks in the oak leaves,
as stone appears peculiar to a head
the soils of a garden pixellated by styrofoam
we posed on the roof. they went that way
like faces of old acquaintance not much thought of
a spy among your crystal in solid state
thereafter inquiries die on the air
dropped below they emit no sound
for raccoons or ibises dibbing. critics perfect
a third estate for a sliding whistle. that wasn’t all
the friends loop the buoy to her contract
or a shaded bankster was the site of manipulation
through a hurdle. the good thing about is wise and
the wise likewise good is all we need to know.
this is ever and similar to convince me of
each has his filigreed hatchet in sunlight
the pragmatic coterie straightens a den
while a moderate tide, anonymous calls
diner donut romance to a magisterial lot
purchased. rattlesnake stout and surely famous
in this nightclub ice pile, the mexican phonebook
surplus inventorial with bedroom sets
flagships stuffed in your pants (obvious gibberish)
cold day I walk and smell the lighter spark.
potato wraps and tetanus studio enclave
a fusty wash-and-fold condemned in passing
but equally regarded. its fumes spilled
clogged the airshaft with hay. each desire
itself divides in blanketed mists, deranging
cleansers, pharmaceuticals and therapy
brown paper crinkling in roadside atlas
others tell separate stories. for now there are
emails to rearrange and household chores
only in remembered delusions, tangle of words.
Robert C. L. Crawford’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Nat. Brut, Ladowich, Powder Keg, Golden Handcuffs Review, White Wall Review, The Equalizer, TravelTainted, and The Opiate. A founding editor of the poetry journal Prelude (2016 Pushcart Prize), he has guest blogged for the Best American Poetry, and his critical writing was among Flavorwire’s Best Literary Criticism of 2014.