I circled the sun
with a lasso of figures
in the dark, where every
atom’s splitting. My fingers
tingled, slowly growing
numb. To make nothing,
draw a circle around
what isn’t there. Bless the hands
in the mirror, whoever
they belong to. Eat clouds
when in the motherless air.
Is a short time
circular, fluttering faster
than the heart? Bodies
are expendable, maybe.
Suddenly as wild geese cross
a mesa’s rim, my chest
was heavy with sun.
What use the desert’s
blank rock silence? I am just
a distance from myself.
And so are you.
— C. JOHN GRAHAM
C. John Graham’s chapbook Where I’m Going is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press, and his poetry has appeared in The Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and many other publications.Graham is a septuagenarian poet living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and formerly worked at a particle accelerator facility.