RIDING SEAWARD
You’ll find my circumlocutions encrypted within these nested circuits
Of alleyways apartment blocks boulevards and viaducts—evading transport.
These things happen—besides we’re stuck for the moment on this overpass
Parsing redactions from our bootleg mixtape tour—so magnificently garbled
By the analog maw—thanks to your impressive array of improvised editing tools
Notwithstanding my stitched erasures. Our fitful conversation folds through fabrics
Like a double helical murmuration. Or is that a kit of speckled darker birches swinging
In the mirror? The mark of uncertainty draws attention to a point just as one gesture
From you is more than enough until a fan unfurls below fountain stippled canopies
Of Jacaranda sway. If a domino falls into a friend’s quick hand under the table
What’s the special providence in that? Another random ask in the midst of things.
I mean it’s not like we’re perpetual college friends worrying over the plummet
Of a sparrow or scanning liminal least sounds lofting lines homeward—escaping
Into peripheries of light the way a wing scapes which is to say how feathers
Feather. So now you know why I have a habit of collecting broken lines of code
For necklaces or passwords from handwritten recipes like darts dozing
In a traveling case. Maybe others see us from the passing lane enjoying this
Course of particulars without autocorrect saying we can’t wake through things
For ourselves. I’ve heard such drowned complaints from roughhewn chambers
Muttering back seat matters. That’s your best strand for any final dusk walks.
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W. SCOTT HOWARD lives in Englewood, CO, where he gardens and writes. Scott’s poems may be found in Diagram, E.Ratio, Talisman, Visible Binary, and word for / word (among other journals). His collections of poetry include the e-book, ROPES (with images by Ginger Knowlton) from Delete Press, 2014; and SPINNAKERS (The Lune, 2016). He teaches poetics and poetry in the Department of English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver.
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Read more by W. Scott Howard:
Poem in B O D Y
Poem in Diagram
Poem in E.Ratio
6 Poems in word for / word
More information @ DU Portfolio and ink node