THE END OF GEOMETRIA

You’ve been phoning-in Geometry.
Your dad came back from hell
to eat your mom’s face.
And now he’s coming for your face.
Whatever you once felt about him—
his noble stances on issues,
care for details, an ability
to hold a silence—is suddenly
irrelevant. Unrelenting, odorous,
bear-like, bluishly-wet,
unrecognizable as the man
who did his best for you to reap
joy, success, security, etc.
Draw a pentagon around yourself
and your mother, he told you once
in case something were to happen.
And like a good son, you did.
But it was a hexagon.

THE BIG NUN

Everyone’s waiting for the big nun.
Our houses have been blown away.
Our books are out of place.
Life’s clinching hard to waning comforts.
If we make rope out of rope
what is the point of love?
We’ve started saying things like that.
And now there’s the darkness.
It’s been creeping into everything.
Suddenly, Here comes the big nun.
She was different than we pictured,
sashaying down the slopes.

THE END OF POSSESSION

Don’t open it. Don’t open it.
says little Bob in front of six
pieces of toast, a bowl of oats,
an egg, three jars of marmalade,
and a table of army men.

Why won’t you open it, Bob?
says the woman who looks
like the woman who once
breathlessly pushed an electric
knife across the wet beef.

THE END OF THE VANISHING

A woman
waters

a prickly
bush

of little
white

flowers
before

beating
the children

in bad-
minton.

NIGHT HAS MANY WEIRD ANGLES

Night has many weird angles.
I look out at the endless,
embarrassing pointiness.
Its peaks are paper mouths
licking blue bells in the bulbs.
Meaning: light, a daffodil.
All suffering is funnelled.
Hold a cone up to your heaving life.
Turn away your horse.
Must I think of every little thing?
Remember me like a mirror.

Zachary Schomburg is the author of six books of poems including, most recently, Fjords vol. 2 (Black Ocean, 2021) and a novel, Mammother (Featherproof, 2017). He is also a painter. He lives in Portland with B and Y. These poems are from a new manuscript called Wool Moon.