Sand is one type of ground I can imagine
sailing across. Also snow
the air not lace, but glass
cornea rasped by a cat’s tongue
the body’s halyard
knotted in a monkey’s fist
*
The plan is simple
dumbfounded
blindfolded
ajar
to be creatures that consume
excrete, wait
to be fed
I call you
you call me
and in this way
we build a precarious temple
Contortioning
through a split in chain link
wolves in the city
fogged by data-exhaust, sewer-steam
democracy
all those missing children
all irrelevancies
time ticking up
the expiration
on the milk
*
Every second envelops
like amber around an insect
*
The harvestmen are out in greater numbers
sharing the prime real estate
on the bathroom ceiling
Viburnum
outside the window infested
with aphids, kitchen flies blitz
bytes and bits
of our computers worming with viruses
how life effloresces
What follows from a kiss at the crook
of the elbow
The best kind of soiling
And the heart? Tell me about the heart
It’s red and big and fat, it needs
a good basting
every twenty to thirty minutes
*
Light, how
does it know
to bend around
what’s massive
why should it
care?
Christopher Robinson earned his MA in poetry from Boston University and his MFA from Hunter College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the MIssouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Night Train, Kenyon REview, Nimrod, McSweeney's Online, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Djerassi Resident Artist program, among many others. He has been a finalist for numerous prizes, including the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the Yale Younger Poets Prize. This summer he has a fellowship at Bread Loaf as a scholar.