The black pencil on an eye arousingly
Sipping it, a beautiful yawn, like some brier
Vega ascends; Mars likewise ascends
To manufacture a die cast for profiteering
And I felt it in all the overcooked luxuries
The moon is growing this month, every day
The homeless guy molesting our dinner
Where the auto-da-fé ran
Why you wearing that costume
Is something you know about
Your mustard sweater pour it over my eye
It's lucky to be when fields blaze
The bricks reuse a grinding wheel
The sweeper left a glinting layer on the brane,
GRADATION
I still remember before the irritant wore off
Moms and grandmother at the lookout prefecture
Its white breasts... and their votive exit
That was Bridgeport area—driving no intent
As the gardener museum dotted lines:
The particular grows generic, and into the ground
Its fork is rooted in the particular nature
Of its given subject, and the flowerbox can tell
The semblable a waterlogged record on foam
Afternoon stripes the crater peak tufts
When adventuring I meet the broken cement
That reductio ad absurdum of … pleasure dome
All I want is its family and its little peace
My book with the perfect binding on a sofa piece
BEZELS
to transgress velleities is the actors
so the aesthetic of occultism sinks in drains
and mall garden wall zero teen fountain
her murmur unknots covers the skin
laundry bladder girders a pre-fab warlord
news of driven secretaries makes life as to spirit
off scratch paper, the secret room
an eagle beside a pile of snakes and mice
gives an interpreter the wooden grave of a chair
as mixed rock a trumpet mountain
don’t release the captive meal ticket until
we reach sanctuary month
I eat chemicals your perforated hoodie
into peeling a turning point
Robert C.L. Crawford is an editor of the poetry journal Prelude (2016 Pushcart Prize) and is writing a book on historic intellectual families. His poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Ladowich, Golden Handcuffs Review, The Equalizer, TravelTainted, The Opiate, and White Wall Review.