The time was 7:55 pm.
One could not see the sun.
The season was spring.
The temperature was 49°F.
It was not raining.
Two Poems from Want
Rusty Morrison
WANT
even when not engaged by your intellect these symbols
speaking to themselves perform so that the ineffable
power for which they work will recognize itself when you
can only tense with access denied you can’t hear zero
degree shifts between any two close resting objects an
imaginal resistance you try to perforate with
gestures like cleaning mirrors in gas station restrooms so
few have them now and all your reflections look more like what
sea churns up foam and cloud-face an origin that wades past
death this is what Cézanne proved
that all contours will elude
you
WANT
who are you living for asks refrigerator warble
as if it weren’t a death rattle your fingers fidget
a strand of hair to make misery conspicuous
the quieter troublesome is animate in any
next randomly opened page of your getting-up-again
story these days will just bloom for you dried-stick willfulness
called it reality when you thought words weren’t just wreckage
receptacles you called on the humanity in you
as if persons hadn’t a uniquely apocalyptic
longing Barad says it takes “rethinking agency to
appreciate how lively even dead matter can be”
image seepage guaranteed didn’t you have an honest
repulsion to promises
but diagnosed it as just
fear