BY: PAUL CUNNINGHAM
society’s weight
floats
on river’s
surface, to such an exten t
I go blank
in the mirror my bones appear closer
closelysyllabled
than most ontological assumptions of
l i f e or m a t t e r
as I imagine every way a body’s blood
could possibly spiral, vortex
beneath my skin
mirror you stop me, the river
sometimes my head
rages,
infinite your touch, a memory above
I feel emptied of unnecessary weight
a river raging, reassembling
I traverse the current, con-
fluent waters, I cannot speak,
drifting, I
catch only a glimpse:
the sharp of a beaver’s
orange hammer-tooth
the noisy orange-red gnaw
of sunlight’s impact
how it alters landscape
surface and depth
how a mirror always
brings us back
into focus
Paul Cunningham is the author of the The House of the Tree of Sores (Schism2 Press, 2020), The Inmost (Carrion Bloom Books, 2020), and translator of Helena Österlund’s Words (OOMPH! Press, 2019). He is a managing editor of Action Books and a PhD candidate at the University of Georgia. @p_cunning