Poetry

He Considers the Witness Appearing

My friend, I could tell you how much of my life has been buried here— the nights and the days like wastes ever-extending under this numb, air-conditioned sky. Here words get worked hard, as gum in a coach’s mouth, wrung like a towel. Like water, they flow to the shape of anything. Here every word shades another, leaf masking leaf. More than you know, my friend, this is no place for you, you are farther from home than on any of your sweating postings. And you sit in front of me and say you did not, “Absolutely, yes sir. Absolutely,…

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