The fox and its tail

There is time-to-time urgent
material

the place where you and I resemble
one another

where the field is a mode of
expression even the sun

slips by in the morning in the dark
the moon

it feels almost personal
witnessing a season

the way it involves an attitude context
is a two-way mirror

with reflection there is room to exist
with serious inaccuracy

I sense
a sensibility for the hour

entirely intimate the weather
it changes and it doesn’t

make sense
this is august supposing september

an imaginary midpoint the planet
a rock but it looks like light

in the morning
in the dark

there is previousness to the animal
how it shakes itself off

Love needs reality

I call you because
you are near and autumn
disrupts
a hyperbolic feeling


The pause
is noise waiting, the sky
is mostly
huge


I forget what is here and I am
bad


like the dog
I recognize my master
the leash who holds


A force
against anything is another thing


A permanent fixture
the ceiling
sags


Dead skunk
assumes position, I carry
humiliation


The sun walking
and revealing
my wretchedness


So yesterday is a lovely
purple I love
nakedly


boredom, wasp
sting


and there you are
chewing berries


at the leaf-end


A large white flower
in June

Belladonna

Wild flips and I wish
I could move
like that

amorous air swollen
up between
the hills.

You defend someone
you fear
you resemble—

a flower
at night and
poisonous.

To the touch
I am flaccid

magnificently
full of it.

Dylan Friedman is a poet living in Western Massachusetts. You can find their work in the tiny, Little Mirror, and forthcoming in The Iowa Review.