WATCHING THE CORNERS TURN CORNERS

We’d been darning the trousers of noblesse for a quarter of dawn when
Simplicity entered and lowered the shades. No one noticed at first. She
was the size of an ant with the voice of a Jumbotron. The lights flickered
to the tune of “Robin Hood and Little John” and the aroma of barksouth
raised the hair on our broadsides. As you were saying, every breath is an
echo.

Her cardigan electrified. Marcuso threw a pouch of terephthalate in the
furnace. Its sheen caused a stir. The stew had cooked for a century and
now the barnacles were soft. We grasped our candelabras and entered the
whale’s mouth. Daybreak broke like a bachelorette.

HOW CAN YOU SAY YOU LOVED ME WHEN

They drove into an avalanche in their two-seater with the top rolled down.
Pulled onto the dinosaur of the roadside. You said, let’s cut a hole in the
afternoon. I sidestepped into a woman with traffic light earrings. Her name
was Simply. We got in line to board the cable car. Bearded men waving
cell phones. The cable lurched and emitted an archivist. She discoursed on
“The Insurgency of an Oral Fixation.” We’d better find another way
across the river, I said, and you pulled me into the hollow of an oak. The
squirrel said her name.

THE SEAS OF MALTA

Marcuso picked up a rock. He put the rock on top of a larger rock. He
picked up a larger rock. He put the larger rock on top of the smaller rock.
He walked. He looked over his shoulder. At the rocks. He picked up a
fourth rock and threw it at the three rocks. It landed in front of them. In the
dirt. Marcuso picked up a scallop shell. He swung it like a frisbee. It sailed
past the rocks and hit a lamppost. The light flickered and released a
gumball. It rolled towards you. Past the laundromat. Marcuso took off his
left shoe. He threw it at a billboard. It sailed through the billboard and
landed in a manhole. He took off his right shoe. He threw it at the
precedent.

STOP I’M GOING SANE

Everyone here has a baby and a backpack. Sparrows fly through the
passenger. Geomorphology behind the church. How do you put an asterisk
in a cloud? The flower or the bud? Simply carved a channel through the
page. Why did you come here if you don’t like touching animals? I hope
you flatten. The smell of a rose is never. Don’t come at me spreading
feather. Fish Fuck. Marcuso unplugged the windows in his veins. Like
squeezing love from a stone. I hailed a cab. It started to hail.

Emmett Lewis holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University where he was the recipient of a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. His work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in Chicago Review, Nat. Brut, Tagvverk, Mercury Firs, Grotto, Fieldnotes, and elsewhere. He lives in Queens, NY.