Spencer Selby

Three poems

Patex Ont

X.
Automatic the trance we live in, full of little hours and minutes left for dead on schedule that holds a grudge like money against night air. Forge revolt attached to ceiling fan, smiling smile of profane method by sleep gaining ground. Digressive spine and skull told about effort. Motor’s fidgety vowel sound claimed as form of worship. People you thought were fake with voices howling at moon shining brightly on a fragment of this sheet across your bed.

O.
Hand explores terrain where slush feels better every day. Insults slide with thumb pointing at abyss running along its index finger. Clutch pencil by attention to worm emblematic. Writing urge below round rock stanza of failure. Just the right company to think love is why I can’t get up like I used to. Wandering slow through earth other language that I almost recognize again.

Please Wireless

#

Push against belief doc
challenge of fault taken

Struggle in background
(approach approach)

Get cold shoulder
necessary to meet

relative without equal
one very long day

#

Who is nervous because
the truth arrives

in camouflage we can
never quite see

A theory of silence
that keeps us guessing

Static assertion
that may provide transit

#

At dusk settling between
two the old prayer
alone always crazy

By touch by crawl modify
loose repeating race
to give it body

By world apart squeeze
continents together
over mine

#

Freedom is the next aisle
in department store
closed for the night

It’s so dark anything
is possible again

The sponsor of disaster
we read in the paper
can’t go there enough

#

Keeps account in debt
to humdrum passion

Advantage broadcast
agent of poison

Buzz about origin
put naïve citizen on alert

#

Use color to bring taste
in line with appearance

Soon the landmark is full
and sparks shoot out the top
of its acquired range

Only the deaf receive
continuous applause

#

Emerge from tirade
suggested by
time growing short

Bolster attack at speed
quickly erased

Massage metaphor
becoming philosophic

#

If I connect now
relax and follow
the urgent ring

If appropriate response
is caught dreaming of
wrong liquid residue

So pronounced I rise
with chest of lightning
the tide washes in

#

Horizon embarrassed
this trouble at will

Intently a man fights
intellect each way

beseeching media
to employ research

that his conscience
separates from without

Original Veneer

We waited in a room upstairs, next to bookshelf distorted, on leather couch simmering with tight slacks and very white skin. No one mentioned wall slated for removal. Feet were square then multiplied during negotiations that went all night.

Cut to scene witnessed in the same house. The couch is now Freudian and is covered by parents with a bullshit excuse. Had to run from quarrel about sex. Both accused the other of wanting a third. Paper was signed for athlete on crutches that didn’t show.

The woman was presented as an addition to a wardrobe she couldn’t afford. Between engagements she preferred a less attractive image, sitting on the deck holding court by force of association with table of stainless steel. Has mean look, legs oddly splayed, and the surface is distressed.

Stock line used to close wound suffered behind the eye, in mid-sentence. Beam in hallway angled against the grain, supporting relationships that only a humorist would take seriously.

Lost interest in the project when carpenters arrived. Sketched a series of windows without perspective by normal routine. Every day spent rubbing on glass as something otherworldly, a vision of release, like savoring the void or very poor taste getting even.

Disappearance demands bodies. Terms of use require ghost at some point tinkering with appliance from Goodwill or The Salvation Army. Deception exposed by a small malfunction, teeth protruding at base and tongue stuck above frame. Authentic as a note left on stove that has haunted him and kept the old kitchen relevant ever since.