Bartering in the Square
i
sit in a
year
no longer my own
while
outside
faces shift into
heroic
sad angry masks that fall
away.
in
some version we understand how
heartbreak
is a distance between
two
attached strings that grow taut and
snap
but now
we
run through rain to escape.
beyond
us
pigeons
gather by
a
chair on a street corner where
someone
half crazed forgets
to
care about our political
delusions.
these
notes you carry
are
welcome for all to take.
Treeline
the
ditch is nearer
in
my dream as you walk away,
copper
sun or scarlet sea,
lost
door keys, the hour badly spent, dripping
from
a sea-journey to a highway.
i
want to die (what do you want?)
barely
tolerated, living on the margin,
exchanging
masks and shuffling
beads
on a rod.
your eyes inaccurately spot the line
that
I whisper and take.
(what
did i know of waters rushing past
of
all the things our father tried to teach us?)
love
is a naked
when
it grows wild.
When
the flag bearers
ask
you to gather your
goods
for barter, just
remember
that they
have
been lying to
people
for so long
that
they don’t remember
which
horn holds the
truth.
Look at their
rug,
dismiss it, and eat
up,
for tomorrow more
will
follow, and you
will
need to decide.
William Allegrezza edits the press Moria Books and the webzine Moss Trill, and he teaches at Indiana University Northwest. He has published many poetry books, including Step Below: Selected Poems 2000-2015, Stone & Type, Cedar, Ladders in July, Fragile Replacements, Collective Instant, Aquinas and the Mississippi (with Garin Cycholl), Covering Over, and Densities, Apparitions; two anthologies, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century and La Alteración del Silencio: Poesía Norteamericana Reciente; seven chapbooks, including Sonoluminescence and Filament Sense (Ypolita Press); and many poetry reviews, articles, and poems. He founded and curated series A, a reading series in Chicago, from 2006-2010.
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