At the end the women are screaming
the men are pleased or irritated
someone is sad on the verge of crazy
the children are eating sausages
and jeering as they throw rocks
and poke each other with penknives
a house is ripped apart
the floorboards pulled up
one at a time
every pillow and upholstered thing
slit with a knife
a hand jammed in the stuffing
shuffles for nonexistent bread
the temptress penal bound
well into crazy
still moves as though
upheld from surfaces
crowds pour out the door
parroting fashionable postures
like crows amassed on an iceberg
while petulant, the president
stops dinging his bell
slouches in his chair
huffing and fiddling the dinger
Earlier, I was in a car accident.
People asked me if I was going out later.
I told them I had been in a car accident.
They laughed at that
as to say we understand.
I felt a strong and vague dismay
come over me and it felt like kinship.
I don't know why a standing person
doesn't sit when talking to a sitting person
nor the reverse.
Sometimes when a source of light is eclipsed
I think only how perfect
the back of the eclipsing thing must be.
I think of an island
its remoteness,
how it was found not as a result of looking.
Like jumping through a waterfall.
Nude people waving from rocks.
Luke Bloomfield has poems in Glitterpony, Invisible Ear, So and So Magazine, Sir!, Strange Machine, and has been featured in Wolf in a Field. He's a co-editor of notnostrums and a member of the Robert Walser Society of Western Massachusetts.