The Night Of The Stations
To arrive in another city of torn politic
And to use a red light against the rising buildings
As an ethereal crimson flag. To arrange another date
And to dread the use of my poor spanish. Reggaeton
Becometh public address echo, the rhythm a language
And the beacon on the mountaintop is a young star
Above the green of the chimeric flow, the lighted blur.
The dream incubation, buñuelo and the fallen man
Of the crosswalk, the green parrot the atemporal mark.
As if I ever could print a clean book of it.
As if the orchard and its chart, could still be made.
Could still portrait a renowned meaning, the placid mirror
Of exacting reads, of the cosmetic dust and causation.
Time ended long ago, with a sequence of globe light
In the fog of the low arches. In the night of the stations.
The Chlorinated District
From here I can backward turn the innocence
but I was probably born hateful and bothered.
To some, any limit is the line of a vengeful hand.
Cracked along the deck, cutting through the houses.
And it got worse. Then came the promise.
To become one who produced real effects. To,
essentially, work at anything and everything
in the great negotiation with benevolent air
channeled through the rainbow hill of high priests.
Of war and commerce and art and religion.
The future is the hope of the death of the promise.
The end of war and clean energy and peace.
The final enlightenment and the high rise of hells.
The oiled sex or the chlorinated district,
poolwater phantasma makes a dark chamber of the treeline.
The horizon of stadiumlight. The prophetic manifesto.
There was no better age. There is only falling across the earth.
Caught maybe by the ruin, or a brief dune of cash.
Past moments rearranged to create a present method.
A unified destination, glowing through sleep, always unreal.
The Marquis Of Extended Grace
The ghost rainbow connects the atrium to the marquis
of extended grace, the imperial tombs a failed ladder,
the fogbow makes a brief coherence above the echo
of mongrel sled dogs rampant and follicle
as we admire the undeniable light of german sky
categorized by other light and the whole memory
of white rainbow, ophthalmology, hummus.
Rosette declared but eulogized in the furious enchantment.
Resisting urge, resisting coherence, the helicopter has come
to complete the sky, relative engraving, frozen heart
of the deepfried dropshaped appetizer,
but she could taste the edge, the correct attainment of flavor.
To exchange I miss you, then to look for the gun,
then to validate more paper only to confirm
that I did not send the email to confirm the apartment.
A grass of knowledge, kinetic punishment altered
by a sweep of alignment, young americans clear and funny
and missing, she said I was sad, she said I was drunk,
she gave me the name of the uninterrupted greek city.
— Michael Borth is a writer from The Hudson Valley. His work has appeared in Otoliths, Fence, DFL Lit, Spectra Poets, Forever Magazine, Keith LLC, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Health Department, a novel available here: thecoastlands.net/work