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By Peter Burghardt
Poetry•Vol. XXXI No. 3 (Winter 2018)

it takes long so

mystic becomes streetlights where day used

to come a bird on the fence

is banded elsewhere

notness grows into you

 

washing my neck in the dark

I said I’d see no

nothing but meant

I’m with the mud and can’t

walk inside or ruin it

 

imagine it’s like

what you beg for when you shouldn’t

mix insomnia with your other abyss

you tell yourself you’ll pay for it we’re

always paying

 

for what we thought

inheritance would be

though the mail still comes on Saturdays

our neighbor is thinking of slaughtering

his rooster

Peter Burghardt
Peter Burghardt lives in Oakland, California, where he co-publishes speCt books and works with Omnidawn Publishing. His poems have appeared in The Offending Adam, Tammy, White Stag, The Laurel Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Cosmic American Music, was published by Old Gold in 2017.

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