I like hearing things before
I feel them and
the other way
around
The disconnect I guess the shadow
Listening the scent
of Hendrix
The symphony of an oyster sluicing down
the throat
The hum of horseradish in its wake
And ounce after ounce of Grey Goose erupting
In the guts
like a rainbow
The scent of a rainbow is dampened wood
In August and August sounds
like crickets and frogs
Fucking their brains out and sex tastes
Like oysters the sea
Looks like laundry on the line
Just before a summer downpour
Giddy helpless everywhere
I prefer the Walt Whitman to the Brooklyn
To leap from
but it makes no difference
I’ve just crushed a mosquito against my ear again
And its one-note song tastes
Of iron
I’ve been told dust is my destiny
Hurry up
I say
I couldn’t be happier
Alexander Long’s third book of poems, Still Life, won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 2011. He’s also published four chapbooks, the most recent being The Widening Spell (Q Avenue Press, 2016). Work appears & is forthcoming in AGNI, American Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Blackbird, Callaloo, From the Fishouse, Miramar, New Letters, Philadelphia Stories, & The Southern Review, among others.