ONLY DARLINGS

The night was like spokes, easy was like spokes
on an illegal wheel. Was like. Airplane shadow

pang on low cover crop, like rum balls, like waving
hello to someone
who didn’t notice. That happened and then vulturous

it was day. Songs for panting, interdiction, a difference of pixels correlating a symbol from an event
from a ray. Started in one corner of the room. Ferns in dapple scent. Do you agree to the terms? It’s go
time. Put on your shell, affix your stray soma. What’s his given name? He came past from cloy. Warlike
in a spool. It was left in the weather too long. Eventually so many lace nerve curvy go crossfaded
windborne in cashback frost. Eventually the race was lost. Defending of kindness, purples.

Motel like plenty anymore bells. Landing soon,

drift
outside of
the frame, the boys
were trouble. We, then facing,
made a big split. When the light came

pastured onto the letters, a definition occurred. Spread on harmony this riotlike form of jam cooling.
The tops glowing tree lung saw sky inch. I reached the white glare. Still it’s moving, a fluff whisks
youth out of this Illinois noise to Illinois growing. One extra beer. Solid work. Over sixty shined
octaves, all vying. For which I got paid at the end of my question. In order to walk, he dialed a
sumptuousness. It won whistle maybe silence. Yeah I fell back asleep. And behind that estate, a
duration of insides made experience.

Silent mode. Noise

cancelling mode. Nightswim.

Orange from
periphery, like ice. I repeat property

the names. What’s all this deafening? Daylight pawned among friends, slain atop the cafe of what’s
inside of me. Tatters special where understood so then. Kentucky mentioned. Briefly hair along a
rumple. Buffered fool’s glow, when the relief became fantastic. Then put strokes in a book. I know
they’re studying me. Dialed polymer voice unfit factual realms. Upcycled and shared. A living room of
ex boyfriends. Did you hitch a gone narrative to the memory? Small plastic mementoes. Push

notification:
Evan was a dog in the dream
and wrote me a postcard. Door frame, like, “just jiggle it.” Balloon tempo.

For them I tuned my thinking to long hallways of money.

Go to the water, I then became as

looking out of the window. I didn’t see smoke. Along a river they played. Buckets in riprap cum rope
mixed hue. Kerosene. An offer in dark. No words amply describe its spaciousness. Tangle it on. Now
it’s alien, now it’s a slight wonder. While seated and thinking. Hard bank right pleasantries. Logistical
nightmare. My name, that meant nothing in full. Like this small flower, like this river rock, like a
radical choir. Cream I grasp or forgive purchase life is play. Living free minus. Bye. Simple red
Mustang dad saw it. Casio or boy whispers fox this awesome Yukio Mishima hour. His closet. I miss
the internet as a place. A truck started the evening climate. Smelled

out the window. Dallas. Little

wild clouds pecked. Walked among us. Occasionally I’d hear the voices. Faded denim. Glossy bulge.
Torrential gospel. On the never way long hearted. Rich men emailing frantically out of time. They
came, show-ready animals shimmer mangled and delicate. County lights, stripes, a cold soda. Meats.
Gallant pig. Tidal in vocabulary rank, butter which made sense. Registers of second thought. Or do
odes figure themselves out. He wasn’t sure what to do with the wound. And thus drove. Wombs
became brother finally. Why I kept the keys hidden. Should one’s summer provide a case of secret
looks? Pried sister once held wondering above voice then borrowed fast. It turned into a dilemma.

Looked upwards out of the cage.

You couldn’t put it down. Amnesty

removed flowers from the lovers fist. Outside of the swimming. Awning into worship besides a
pretending. Shuffled jazz. Clean the dispute from the notorious pan. Crashing faith modernist long list
appeal. Glanced at that. Did she really travel all that way for feeling? He lived along the edge.
Someone gets free, you’d been on my mind, was it blaring? Everyone belonged. He fixed my shit.
Wide open authored wind minus a fatness of open tongue. Or a huddle made empty so there’s a
softness. Instrumentals.

Candy heard pushing
all yesterday turbulence those faces on winter slam like wings this gray this parking lot crispy.

Vague memories of books, of fingers. Technology
of scar. Fingers over the memory. Listen

the rain on the farm makes a sentence. Ought this bouquet mean something? I won’t be back here for a
long, long time. And things might not author out. Please, some more. Then there were answers, but you
had to pay. Piano on plastic loner story. Made into motion fuzz resin hit bluish. A plaque. Just like a
hole upon sound, I was sighing as the hour carved us out. Selected a morph. Think alone forfeit
waterborne carry out smoke fetish. He slipped out of amazement. Smarte Carte line. Days thinned we
left you rural zone. Behind it all, a bridge, a bridge out hex double schist then two crows upon it, so
cool ripples cough making it creep into meaning. Rattles.

Stretched velvet under tissue song or body

through it. Intermezzo come here. Scissors by basic water

Aristotle said. A baked picture of guitar solo. Uncle motorik wizard garage

forever. “Good subwoofers.” Safety information under your seat.

What do the images want? Weapons
held at port. Portable night crème. Bodies on vascular error signal. Calming but who’s to say. Settle
down. Do they speak when we’re in the other room? Some love makes a truth shaken. In traffic he
harmonized with the ambulance. She liked his hand on the shifter like that, in the sun, on the ring road.
Pass your trash back. Where else to sleep?

Rammed logic

I’ve got a feeling its true colors TKO. Polyester. Why should I go on? I think
about his cock often. They kind of tore the room apart. Portals of this desire grew up. I wish I knew.
Family recipe. He rode it like it was going out of style. Saturday comedown on creek fossil light. Curly,
sour hair. It was a big deal. Wish made in property quiet or theft asking to be made visible. Matured
holdings. I don’t know what I did without it. Hanging there I felt within us a repair, a projected
tempting. Elevated pulse. When I woke up he smiled, he walked

through the door and into the trees. And wasn’t my function at all. Displays and their meaning

kept inches from the troubleshoot. Kept from crying until dinner. Because we plow through so many
mysteries, it’s hard to archive this recollection of autumn, the house against the hill and the slam of the
sedan door. Her friends love her. Needles made a pattern against the kitchen. August then. Eclipse
miles out of reason patterns, aliens replacing alien gestures

in a declining country. Fluently he spoke

of the sunny sides of all streets. Sounds airy dipped in them. Another sunlight I thought abnormal but
all else persisted. Sugar? A book in your hand pink the dawdled various yet understanable depression
of an object’s extended function. Cherish the lumps but not as you might think. Or cartoon. Milk of I
don’t care. By the pound.

These green ones
have a bit of a speedy come up. So we pitched our tents

on maniac edge, the sun purple then inched beyond our legs. That spiral was the regular part, the many
mansions part in heartbreak. Darned felt. Am I better off outside? Probably a knock on the pond. No
fire. Long out the cape mist upon whence hidden dwarfed this presentation. Mild, tender, twinkling
daggers. He agreed. A cold, windy approach ending now, suggestive of curtains, specifications of a
body estimated in a sort of automatic texture that passing thought entailed. Would you like to lie down
a bit? Have you eaten? A flag makes loud dancing beyond the district. Drape. We made contact. I was
just there. No mention

of patriots. Spilled letters didn’t. Undenied, then germinated idiot landed in meanwhile

while looking up that, clouds of dropdown menu. I rambled. In a goodbye flicker outside the cow shit
orbit of now, in the layer of brightly now, an again October detonated outside the book. Meditation war.
Implanted the syllables dangle between stepping away cares and radiant decisions, the residue of what
was realized outside the cage.

Pronouns gathered. As. Night
drift guitar again
shed faces of ajar
nudes. Went the portal
on its life between pixels.

Wikipedia rabbit hole. Say leaving the plan outright, consensual paradise yet torn meniscus of
perpetual radiance impossibly that. Lumens of starving odes commuting. That one. As in, one day I
stole the regular movement yet non-aware like speech:

37 O’Neil Street, Kingston, “New York”

walking on

a long embrace, elegant burnout on articulated porous face. They’d do it if they really wanted to.
Pumped in the day

a syllabus of textured air, weather
fracked from discrete corners,
April. Crude violet bouquet, some quiet
quilt of pleading boys caught
desiring in found places. I break everything

up in tiny auctioned motes. Then sing below the current

the Internet’s noticed windshear. A film I don’t really care to watch on a laptop on a table in a room’s
single strand of blue Christmas lights on one wall. Ions. Open to learn more. Crickets the poem a series
of lace notion or other writing describing an idea hailed by person within forever.

ADAGIO XY

“Tell me if anything was ever done.”

—Leonardo da Vinci

The flower is for everyone

to know Past tense of both
meaning the phrase which admits

all study is aftermath All movement I refuse
is anything Life arrives as a tariff

of thought Fiction
proxy the acquaintance

sludge where a pattern “emerges” intravenous
processes day makes them so

Melodic sexual country

go by beaked or talon drawn this story
down my sides, tho some had been famous

for less—an effect of winter vascular
much louder like the teeth of an event

wonders its light action All country
desire a curriculum of hawk stutter

big nailed to boxcar under advancing blue non-shape A copy for your records?
What is this penal antiquity, just-pressed metals, coins leaving the hemisphere

pocket shadow awakened monospectrum

briefly rattles verbs from their pods the meaning
from the spar of its decay The words hem the products

humming out of consciousness

mute yet offering a prison floorplan, cleaned moments
warbling beyond hugged image I don’t remember

And thought of passing through uncomforted

brief authority, through ancient, idiotic maintenance
extended periods of true, I’d seen before these facts

To bear light clear yet unfathomably

within carbonated matrix—as oblong erotic
potential yet fungible non-grammar psychosis?

If inmates are crystal within the architecture of the road
then it cannot be transit, cannot be cleaned, is not

actually hailed as road I don’t know
what brought me to explain

the colors of the freeway, the shouted un-color
the trees upon its shoulders I don’t feel that lyric

I know a lot of dumb motherfuckers with PhDs.

Ryan Skrabalak most recently wrote the books National Lube (speCt!, 2024) and The Technicolor Sycamore 10,000 Afternoon Family Earth Band Revue (Ursus Americanus, 2024) and the chapbook The Orchids (above/ground press, 2025). He lives in "Kingston, New York," where he runs and edits Spiral Editions, a poetry press and occasional tape label.