to hear you sing, turn
the stream, to hear you
folding silence, letting
silence touch
silence between the
burning manifold of yr
glowing thru the subzero
curb and drifts
escaping sleep, awake
in its awakening
among the mostly
empty and stackable
chairs, for he was
/
worse than
dead, he was confused
and vomiting half
heartedly on the tile
in the stall, an idea
w/o ppl, the song, void
and empty day, dull
same and song, void split
shift split where sleep
my better spirit spoke
turned edges refract
light still the splits shift
so I sleep less, output
more, hope and buy
my life back later, dig up
my shadow a boss killed
/
the angel of this waste
dumper is not the an-
gel, I am the angel
sweeping this plaza
by 7 am moonlight
is a river
sick w/drowning angels
/
as the sun’s warm tongue
licks February ice
melt soaking as if
the world were cereal
bullshit, soft as it is
what you lost, what I lost
what we lost though each loss
differs though both losses
hurt each hurt differs I
mean why isn’t holding
each other working why
can’t we walk through
the gate of this hurt together
the light is going out but
just in one eye
why can’t we walk together
through this gate, this hurt
/
I mean a river sick
w/drowning angles is
3rd job mopping down
a bar moonlight
a river sick w/drowning
angels, my little words, where are
you? where did you go? who
kept you, too long, too
who mouthed you w/small
intentions? I take you back,
little words I want
/
to drown my desire to
destroy my desire to
drown this is your sick bed
I’m leaving a review
to show me you could
kill me I swung the
hammer you swung at
my head I don’t
want to die I wasted
so much life
what else
/
would it be
each silence
generally silence
despair, submission
or belief that one is
only worth what they’ve
paid, to have a voice,
to sing until my throat is raw
each word’s vibration
scours the next word, the song
song and song, piling clouds
in the skull of a mouse
trade my ketchup ration
for a search allowance
sweet ache of scarcity
the librarian tells
me it’s time to go
I know I can return
to it all in my mind
like the king who let
us pull away gold letters
knotted to his doublet
when we pulled we made the
alphabet that made him
king, the alphabet we
trade for silence
stuffed into a hole
your lifeless body
is not a signifier
it is a dead body
it takes language to
tell you this so what I
don’t care I don’t care it
doesn’t prove anything
Jesus’ insurance was great
kill me when I’m dead
you just worked, read
/
the news: yr dead, I look
at the page, grow
broken at the root
you change too fast
time swims faster than I
reel it in, say it
at the gate, hello, sing,
you could and didn’t
I remember that split
that silence that folding
—
Joe Hall is a writer, researcher, and deprofessionalizing academic in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of four books of poetry, including Someone’s Utopia (Black Ocean 2018).