Elee Kraljii Gardiner
Excerpt from The 24 (2021)
once I left a stopwatch running all month
quietly it collapsed moments I did not use enough
pressed send I will rewrite into the perfect future preterite
when and if you find me, I said hello tonight now
1:30
a lift from the screen, diagonal glow
searchlight and unli(gh)t house, hello
what time are you—
6:58
somewhere in sheet time I sidle
my hand into yours
and we ride slight disturbance out
among other faces
8:26
the week faded last year while here it’s morning
or I could whisper rearrangements of digits just as well
reorder the code, rechord the oratorio
I have samples that will make you sick all night
20:12
by three, heavy to the lip
a cup filled with rain I carried it
back through the dream
when I toss cup’s contents
down the runnel of his back
all those hours of archive
all those hours
23:10
every day at 10:44 I plan for something
and the bells don’t ring
and the reminders are cancelled
by windstorms or electronic hail, or grapefruits
rolling down the stairs, or that pack of wolves
swimming across the inlet—I feed them now
which is to say that I register hunger
and if I sometimes let them sample
so be it, they have swum a long way, coats sunk in common
salt—shivered snowglobe, flurried with teeth and licking
their lapsang
they stay in the yard, mostly