by Trevor Ketner

issue 63

                   Wave from the Point of View of a Bird

On the train today a tangled red ghost    or (I’ve been reading Carson) a woman

with cateye mask, red hair piled up              like blood lacing hay. The eyes are flat

like a recording, scratched into something                that wants to melt, of a poet’s 

shakeshimmer after eighteen straight whiskies,       onset of blue, ungentle good—  

no windows into anything/black plastic slick—          night. Her seeing pours out, 

but I think it’s at me; I think I hope it’s at me.      I’ve a feeling, though I’ve not seen

a river in the time it takes to make a moon     (something else I haven’t seen, hiding

behind the black slash of windows         erected in the shape of a building because 

someone didn’t have enough skin to go on   living) full like a glass of almond milk,

sight must pour out like this, not weakly      as tears but hungry in the shape

of a whip in the shape of a river rending

                                     itself pale where seams shred themselves back into edges.