Rigor of the Genioglossus
It’s all over now. What needed to be said
Is said. There is no coming back.
Some data has confirmed you among the dead.
You were debated, talked about, and read
In various reports, journals, articles, and almanacs.
It’s all over now, what needed to be said
Rejected. A teacher’s pithy note in red.
To feel the edges of your nuance felt like catching flak.
Some data has confirmed you among the dead.
For a brief time there was a movement led
By doctors to revive you. Experts. Dabblers. Quacks.
It’s all over. Now what needed to be said
Remains, remnants, in print only, a death mask; just as dead
But in another place. Taxons without Lazarus. Facts
Some data has confirmed. You, among the dead,
Living in the minds of none. Stilled lips. Pale deathbeds
Of the page. Last words. Last known speaker’s death exacting.
It’s all over now. Both in and of you nothing can be said.
Some data has confirmed you among the dead.
The Metaphor of Sight as Understanding
Like an onion paling, peeling, apes compunction,
These tourists in the Forum sweat false tears and shift
Their feet. In time, all myths of ubiquity debunk
Their own concentric images. Gordian facelift
To the Palatine we found oblique. The odd
Plinth. Rough ground. Pale circles of the Circus Maximus.
The root of this evil, statuary of all-seeing gods,
Worn down, radical and peerless, now, with empty eye
Sockets, where glass and oil, roughshod,
Lost out to time. We add more thyme
To sauce and saturnalia the saturnine.
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Jacob Braun grew up on traditional Attawandaron and Haudenosaunee lands around the Onguiaahra, or Niagara Region. His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Dalhousie Review, The Antigonish Review, with above/ground press and elsewhere. He resides in the Halton region with his wife, Erin, where they teach in the local public secondary schools.
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Bill Wolak has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared as cover art for such magazines as Phoebe, Barfly Poetry Magazine, Ragazine, Cardinal Sins, Pithead Chapel, The Wire’s Dream, and Phantom Kangaroo. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, the 2020 Dirty Show in Detroit, the 2020 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018.
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