FLOOD SUBJECT

Envision a body  

its arbitrary shadow  

in the following line

its marginalia and

disobedience torn

into experience  

to lose oneself

in the glitter  

a ribbon in twilight  

the river below

the sky liquored up  

stars tilting in the whorl

the past bled through

an emulsion in ink  

to love someone’s name

as soldiers flower 

in the dark or

words in an alley

the sound of someone

lost in graffiti

I asked about pieces

of night, people loved

people lost, in thrall

to a pale constellation    

alive with the past  

how ink amplified

memory, translucent

an orthographic wildness  

beside our dead  

the people writing

brought to life  

this talk of tangible noise  

an acoustic mark

ineffable, elemental

as any musical notation

out of human control  

an unbridled static

ferocious line  

a chunk of edge

noise spilling over

hard-core versions  

otherworld, effusion

and nothing, the last

word about anything

Peter Gizzi is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Fierce Elegy (2023), Now It’s Dark (2020), and Archeophonics (2016).