Brumal

Playing the
today game.
This is
some kind of
breakthrough.
Cosmic but
also indefinite.
Listing what
I know:
the dead hide
in phone books.
And I am
reduced to
my aimlessness.
It is inside me
and I must
respect it.
In fact I will
write the book
I want to read.
Beginning
on the back
of a receipt.
Agnes calls:
“What are you
thinking of
when you are
not thinking?”
Pneumono-
ultra-
microscopic-
silico-
volcano-
coniosis,
I tell her.
And I am
just a small
object mentioned
on a phone call.
The door handle
too complex
to figure out
today. I feel
like dying
in a strange
Canadian city.
Or to see
your face
blaze at noon.
And lick
the wind
with your hands
tied behind
my back.
We make
invisible beer.
And must
get naked
to obey
ourselves.
“Snow is
only grass
without
meaning.”
I give Agnes
a funny look
when she
says that.
Delete
my own
imagination.
Go for
a swim.
In the water.
The beauty
is that it
never ends.
A “Well,
kind of…” morning.
B/c thinking is
the hard part.
B/c there is
no reason for it.
And I am
just an ear
on the ground.
My blood
is rich and
populous.
And I am
living in
a giant’s head.
This enormous
inexpressible
sanity. You
take me
for a drive.
Like here is
a bunch of
rural America.

Timothy Michalik is a Michigan born poet and an MFA candidate at NYU, where they teach undergraduates and edit poetry for Washington Square Review. The founding editor of the journal/press Copenhagen, they are the author of two chapbooks, Neopastoral (Pétroglyphes) and Moscow, Iowa (Umpteen Triangles).