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Aaron McCollough

Two prose poems

Hence These Alarms

Sometimes I forget I have napped during the day. Hence these alarms. The pieces of a day hang like mirrors? What they reflect, what their subject is: strands of phone calls of tape measure. The narrow part of the cone of the life where persisting is passing through, and you can’t think about it that way so it’s better not to be awake. Or, the pills I take slow me down.

Do real people pray before they nap? My friend long dreamt she was flying towards her own explosion in a black vacuum. I long dreamt I could only crawl and only violently because of my head.

What seems like a memory turns out not to be. Remember to replace the red and black cords to the battery’s posts, for example.

Elegy

Probably wishing this on you once as it happened. This chocolate bar. This passing dilemma. As it may not happen again — our own vexatious downer; as we cannot speak and only glare in the Tennessee heat and only pass in a memory of animus, I’m sorry.

Morning glories in the chain-link fence, winding out. Mission of Burma. Beneath the ball diamond, through there the yellow cloud of white cloud honey suckle, kettle and cat bones.

That you would die. Only one death for you and me and one more for me and who? The hand has pushed your death along as a hand pushes a crease to the corner of a bed. In lots more dangerous places. All the time zones and planets.

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