What Happens When You Imagine Backwards

It’s okay to though you understand the consequences
Rarely are lethal and rarer are they mortal though
They demand an attention you perhaps are unwilling or
Unable to sustain. As we’ve all experienced more times
Than we care to remember, our intentions will outmatch
Their outcomes. Backwards has a way of moving forward
In the way trains moving and being still can be difficult
To tell apart especially as they pass in idling stations
Then our very eyes tell us what we know can’t be true
And the more this happens the less we believe
Not to mention all the others apart from ourselves
Whose stories are betrayed by abject helplessness
Against why we can never stop feeling what did
We do to deserve these stories we tell ourselves

Now that every single one of them is dead, there’s no one to say what happened, nobody to say what they thought happened, what they believe happened, not what they wanted to happen or what they wished to happen, nobody to say what they saw, what they heard, what they knew, what they know; no one left to tell if or if not or to know what is right or wrong, off or if qualified, no one to say it’s all made up or it’s all wrong, every single person who mattered is dead because they are why the story happened in the first place, because without them nothing would have happened; it all happened to them, in their country, to their families, to their people, to their enemies, it is difficult to imagine the discipline of waiting for a whole cast of people to die before telling their story because if they were alive and could know the story you tell of their lives, you would know they can see who you serve and why.

How Do You See Yourself?

Take forever if forever is what
You believe it takes, infinity in splinters
Slowly remember, slowly recall.
Is who is is a you is is a you
You believe yourself to be?
What constitutes you?
Permanently.
All some secret whisper.
Remember recollect & recognize,
Whisper as if there is just one ear to hear you.
You have to be so many!
Out out goes the saying.
Re re re re re re re re.
Try not to re so much.
Whisper as if you whisper reluctantly.
Try to new, do new
With a little love passing through.

Hoping to See My Shadow on a Cloud

I bend down to pick up a piece of light
To pick up a piece of light
I put my head down to bend down
To the light I put down my heart’s
Head to bend forward to the light
I lean all the way in
Thinking I will pick up
That piece of light
I see at my feet
I see it with my open eyes
In the same way I feel shadows
Of light fall ahead of me or shadows
Slide over my wrist and the strangest
Something goes to sleep

thinking of how equivocation can stall anyone’s rhetoric, how prevarication is a word, so is contradiction, “I am unconvinced” is something some people say and might be often reported after reporters report; who would not want a lucrative career and a secure platform? ---in some ways this appears as a true question; if it is disingenuous, it’s hard to say what for?; if it’s sarcasm it’s hard to say for what; what is fetishization for?

Dara Barrois/Dixon's most recent books and chapbooks are TOLSTOY KILLED ANNA KARENINA, Wave Books and EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES FOR ASTRONAUTS, Conduit; and NINE, Incessant Pipe and ANOTHER NINE, Press Brake. She lives and works in factory hollow in western Massachusetts.