The Baluster Slats
My hair is so short. It moves.
There are things in it like concrete, neon gas, pixels, paper maché, and smoke.
We’re reaping ambrosia, but only by a certain height.
Cradles should hang above the ground in fibers that are comfortable in fall months too.
It is not a matter of height, but of eye line.
I’m looking up and thinking about architecture and about how Bataille looks like battle.
I’m young.
The sky is beautiful.
The road constructs beneath the radio tower.
I grew up average in height, and I leave to remember.
The hand that breaches the baluster slats is the hand that records the video.
There is no device above the carpet, between the walls, below the ceiling.
I’m watching the news.
He moves quicker. He is shorter. His face muffles, the magma old.
He has permission to look.
Video floats.
The wave floats in my ear and jabbers. An arthritic bird.
The night sky is dark because there’s a big rusted anvil that takes it up.
The morning sky is gray and brown and its swims.
I had a dream where I was fast running back and forth over a rope bridge.
I grew up below average in speed and briefly swam.
SEAN MCKINNEY
is a senior at
University at Buffalo.
He majors in film studies, though he writes some fiction and poetry as well.
Ant Honey Bored Dame
Here’s a list:
- A grasp of the French language rooted in Alain Delon and spittle
- A snapshot of ice fishing and Quebecois mousse recipes
- A cheap Bangladeshi shirt lined with lyocell and sex appeal
- A sleazy history of punks and dance rockers in New York City
- A small bag of white powder inside a larger, smellier bag
- A memory of the diner scene from Five Easy Pieces
- A skittering fear of city parking
- A scheme to ply relative strangers with news of another local show
- A nagging cold stem on my very white, very bald chest
- A honey ‘n oats bar green-packaged and plainly perfumed
- A mother’s back real sore from hard bleacher seats
- A horrifying last episode of Anthropocene
- A brief listicle stuffed into a pocket by a hippie child that reads “Trees and You”
- A truck’s rear end that might be considered the El Dorado of coffee bumper stickers
- A shoe admittedly expensive that just ties the outfit together
- A forthcoming waitress that disappears into walls lined with Matt Berninger
- A goopy underarm feel that gets a nice pat on the head
- A rib or a collection of ribs complaining of the zoning laws in this venue
- A girlfriend whose polite grimaces make the buzzes in your pocket sorta spooky
- A man named Jon Hopkins to settle the ringing, to make maroon of the dark ride
- A crow shaking your hand goodbye until the winter months
- A span written by stout and porter and lager and the decision to chew some gum
- A recollection empty of the cinema and of advanced mechanics
The highway is prickly with measurements and radiation
Obscura
This language stands, shuttering.
It strikes poses,
mastered by the people.
In the sofa cushions, Nihon Buyō
The TV was going in a blue and in a bore.
He kicked his loafers. They were new and tight.
The TVs were going. Canon de 75 modèle 1897.
His eyes bloodshot. His cheekbones lancing glitter.
He was from the country and never married.
He dropped his Gs occasionally and wore an undershirt.
His thoughts curred. Ford. Carson. The Superbowl.
The night sky was bright and oranged around the edges.
He dropped his cufflinks. Knights with capes in the wind.
He sat like someone were there, saying nothing.
If ever he changed his name that new name would be João.
These hands, he thought. They’re good at ironing.
It starts around the edges, moving in.
Sheet metal. Liturgy. Illness. Analog. Kaidanovsky.
Floodlights. Travelogue. Distortion. Saline. Graphite.
Mondrian. Discharge. Harmonium. It begins to snow.