Overview Effect
Hold the camera like this, one might see
curvature,
bright smudge
a meteor crushed against
the atmosphere, and beneath
the dust slick of a country
where they bow each morning
and pray toward their own dark centers
for something like
a dark center.
Lower now, a woman walking a street
turns her body into a storm of nails,
a debris field
a string of men my brother trained and loved
enter geared up, swearing
this goes on forever
like this space where the planet hangs—
blue fluke, cosmic Tilt-a-Whirl, Wonder
Wheel—
O Wary Eyed,
O Weary Armed, we are floating on the rim
of an aperture
slowly closing.
You, who is
not a thing, but a way of seeing,
and the drone of the nothing blessing
of saying so—
See us.
James Hoch
Beloit Poetry Journal Winter 2013 / 2014
Copyright © 2013 by James Hoch
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission