Center

by Max Gilman '25 on November 9, 2023
Portfolio Co-Editor

Portfolio

i don’t know the name—

bloodclot.

i don’t know a god—

siphon.

i know name—

male body, syllables.

pronouns split the difference,

if god can see

then make blind my eyes ruby,

elixir.

mountain’s mist, hawk castle,

sharp cloud formation, lowering guard,

sunlight like wind august, and

river become trickles of tears where eagles

sing fresh blue air, 

where circles and lines define mere 

moss, my overgrowth, my hair is an anomaly,

wood ripens dark brown, then black.

Brown turns blood in the throat, 

god can never love, but coat,

god is the last chance, the mad observer,

the gut exhumer— to It, 

organs putty, a day a joke, and night to cover shadows of leftover daylight.

And the harsh brash of bent eyes, morning time,

turned inward, grass the devil coming, the brown brash of mowers, thrash melodic, like 

the godly green ones that never needed a drug

                                     never needed a drug

never needle or tugged 

                   never needed a drug

never needle or rope

          blood. 

          Blood.

         BLOOD.

when paper air is scarcely thin, 

the night clock rolls to a peak darker than usual. the bell rang for months, 

how was_____ to know it meant something. 

if anything,

the toll of the bell becomes 

scalps of semi-merchants. Sellers of happy, thick eyed, malice sadness resting on eyebrows like heavy rain. 

in a ghost structure, abandon cities live under soil like mole rats, like a vermin,

i remember 

the third time i remember dying. 

it was purple, 

it was me, 

it wasn’t raining.

i remember remembering I was dying in a cosmos.

one empty of its own existence. 

death was like a broken glass jar,

I am body (gone) i am mind (field) And where is center?

And what is god’s worst mistake?

Noise?