absent magazine

Victor at the Movies

Images forcing themselves
on Victor, pressing against him

is exactly what he came for,
this erasure of sense and self,

suspension of disbelief—
it’s why he sinks lower

into stadium seats: to be
buried in a cemetery of moving light,

the coffin’s wall the screen….
Then the movie ends and there he is,

walking back up the aisle
with empty bucket and cup—

he’s died, but only a little,
and not enough.

Victor in Fall

People said October’s changing foliage
looked like it was on fire, but to him
the leaves were camouflaged
from someone who would set them on fire.
The frostbitten kale of November
had only just shown itself—
the neighbor’s yard a garden all this time.
December: in the distance a sea of ice
scattered with huts—his name on one.
Inside, he drills a hole, takes a deep breath,
and jumps.

Victor Sees the Forest from the Trees

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
—Robert Frost

One could be an ignorer of birches,
oblivious to birches, unaware
that beyond his bedroom window
sway symbols in literature;

or one could be a torcher of birches,
a butcher who hacks their branches into
lumber he frames into the walls of houses
where a fireplace waits to burn more birch.

But the worst one could be—even worse
than ignorers and torchers of birches—
is in fact a swinger of birches: to love

something so hard so much it bends in half
in submission, broken, begging mercy,
gasping to be ignored, to be set in flames.

Victor in New England

Live free or die,
some license plates insist.

But death is,
no matter how he lives.

They should read:
Live free, or not. Die.

One million cars registered
with obituaries. The numbers

flirting with meaning
but meaning nothing

except that the steering wheel
could turn him off the mountain

with a wrist flick. Flying
over the valley, trees

unaware of what’s coming.
Welcome to the New World.