Exactly Like
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
The corner is exactly like the edge which is exactly like
the side. The leaf is exactly like the stem which is
exactly like the cone. When nobody is looking there is
a different protocol for approaching matters of navigation.
A tomato might become a golden modifier. Tomorrow
might turn off the lights in the kitchen. Bigger options
can decompose into new beginnings that feel exactly like
those overcast days when a single star crosses the water of
another cracked screen. When it is difficult to recall
the sequence it is easy to insert new material into the plot.
Four days are better than a week for medievalists making
likely connections and three days are enough whenever
such connections provide a clear window. Good people
want what the best of us want for far moldier reasons.
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Will You Help Me Build It?
(listen to the poem, read by the author)
Unless we are continuously building it together,
there is something missing in the air
between us. It is amorphous and helps you
help me hold myself and you up.
Without it my mind and words keep going
through paper tiger shredding positions, like
the proverbial elephant trampling the real
room we are sharing, until we can no longer
bear such sharing. Our mutual construction keeps
the wolf of the elephant away. It puts roots into
soil so rich it can be tilled by hand. It is a wheel of
care opening like a diamond onto new social air.
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About the Author
Nathan Spoon is an autistic poet with learning disabilities whose poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Columbia Journal, The Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry, and the anthologies How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and Sonnets from the American: An Anthology of Poems and Essays. His chapbook, My Name Is Gretchen Merryweather, and a debut poetry collection, Doomsday Bunker, were published in 2017. He is editor of Queerly.