by Jesse Hilson
If the lithograph needs an image added,
The stone must be resensitized
for its surface to be penetrated
Again, with color.
Belief in sequences is a prejudice
on your part, not mine—
but then the spectacle happened
and I went to recoil from it.
I read a frightening book,
A Marquis de Sade knock-off,
Then March sprang up and I hurried
On walks to look instead for Nature.
The field has no wifi.
All I can tell you is I was born,
And then the rooms full of screens
Soon intercepted me.
I’m a sick man.
I look through the eastern window to witness
The sacred morning sunlight captured
In stained glass.
Leave me alone with my misspellings,
My affectations. My mind’s objekts are
More constant to me than any woman
Has been. That’s not true.
But still, I feel I am post-women, post-Gertrude.
I have felt my life’s tastebuds
Destroyed by women’s capsaicin and what’s left
in my mouth is some hopeful, other design.
The poem in my mouth
Is probably just sepsis, though.
I’m in a truth-zone where you’re
Not welcome. My heart is going to die here.
Jesse Hilson lives in the Catskills in New York State