ENOUGH MAUDLIN GAYS // ALTERED TRUE TALK

-after T.S. Eliot

Buttress passion, truant eye,
Then: ungrieving tryst head a gauzy cry
Like a plainchant etherealized ungodly fable;
Wet rust flow, blue sir, rain laugh inserted beats,
The sputtering introits
Of depthless lights in unbright sleep those spells
Hand raw lust lecherous wrist cloistered bells
Please that sorrow strike a devious ligament
Of libidinous raiment
To plead true to an odor, filming chest tongue
Oh, you caught lack, “But isn’t—”
Whet us, blow, and sate our vision.

CHANCE RUSE

-after William Carlos Williams

If I when my life is seeping
hand to navel hand to vast seams
stars leaping
hand to none hiss a name-bright kiss
in fickle lisps
above brining seas—
if I in my couth tomb
tense awake kaleidoscopically
ignore my error
craving my pert sounds my red
hand stinging often mystically
“I can’t own me, tone me,
I was sworn to bemoan me,
I can’t rest, no!”
If I quagmire alarms, chase,
my bolder ache ruckus
against the cello-sawn glade,— 

Who shall play I am knot,
the sloppy queen prince of my roused chords!

Reuben Gelley Newman (he/him) is the author of Feedback Harmonies (Seven Kitchens Press), a chapbook inspired by the musician Arthur Russell. He is a writer, musician, and librarian-in-training based in New York City, and he coedits for Couplet Poetry. Recent poems are available or forthcoming in Second Factory, mercury firs, Tyger Quarterly, and Afternoon Visitor.