by Theodore Heil
AFK
Place your life in a box and eat
with vinegar and happy sauce
like a proud bull grazing.
There were times you ran
in and out of the house, jumped—
into your girlfriend’s car, through
the night in its casing bullet-like.
You stayed on one side of the river.
And it wasn’t until you grew up,
you felt it all. I mean, loneliness,
rippling like clouds
with dark corners.
DANCE OF SALOMÈ
after Fra Filippo Lippi
Even among
beauty, my heart
still breaks.
Outside,
my mind is
a hand bathed
in yellow.
It’s this, these
nights, the
undeniable
length of January
like a body
severed or
smoke
dancing, all the
ladies crying:
There are still
terrible things.
Theodore Heil is the author of Movements (Bottlecap Press). He lives in New York.