Sunday, August 21, 2022

Joshua Harmon

from Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie



It’s cinematic, the blank billboard at the edge of the woodlot: available. The houses are available, and an ersatz drunkenness is available, and a little snow completes the night. A plow blade chips away at a forfeited afterlife. The soul uploads winter on a dial-up line and awaits affirmation. Spruce boughs bend against primitive roof, and as I start to forget the legal loudness of a muffler on a truck painted with red and yellow flames, an uncontrollable restraint stretches itself between cold sheets and grinds its teeth for hours. Sparks from a jumper cable. Speech bubble filled with black marks. The way moonlight stains snow that’s thawed and re-frozen so many times calls my bluff. The wind still says “As if…”

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