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SHRAPNEL

Anders Howerton

ISSUE THIRTEEN | FALL 2019

Light, measure me particulate.

I deliver you wavelike, gaze.

 

The words are my weight with which to break self in parts.

 

And so I’ve gone and erased all the rhyme. 

Only the scars remain.

 

The pollen blows about. That’s all.

 

I just don’t go near the singularity of bees.

This is my answer. 

 

These things can change you permanently.

 

Similarly, the collected amoebas and my perspective 

are my only geometric proofs of chaos.

 

I have taken so much life this week, light.

 

Still, I am counting the oneness. And here

the city to the human falls at the vanishing point.

 

This is the conflux where everything —

 

what chance was that last thought? A hallelujah,

salvation, you glory, you. I wish this were simpler.

 

Linear is less than natural. As is peace.

 

All is a swarm enveloping room in sanctuary.

Holy ghost, a side-eye, an optic angle. Er,

 

no, just table-top clap, just peony drop.

 

That’s all.

In the end the punctuation has done all my breathing.

anders.jpg

Anders Howerton is a software engineer and poet living in Oakland, California. He has a master's in poetry from the University of East Anglia.

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