Elizabeth Willis

Primeval Islands

This I, this me, I’m speaking from a book. That brain that taught me delicious things, forgivable trains, a signal business. I don’t want to be tragic, even to the goldleafed bug. I, Walt Whitman, with Texas in my mouth. Dismiss this fantasy in favor of our startled shade. I remembered my tricks and what they did. Even apples aren’t free. Our life against the midnight lens: poor Crusoe on Mars. I’m walking through this wall of air to comfort my senate.

Why No New Planets Are Ejected from the Sun

These our ships are the copies of copies. This x is that, lifting off the dock. We think we’re here because we’re crouching in the umber of syllables, that sun is “killing me,” a flag among flies, our frozen boat in frozen oil. Let’s haunt the beach instead of this history beset with cosmic jelly. At the blind is it morning already? This word has meant so many things, I need a fence to move this gem-like feeling. Or I’m that bus, in hacked-up disquiet, stuck at the light.

Oil and Water

One person’s idyll is another’s confinement. Midnight everywhere is praying through the noise, a token of the obvious. Hours blurt out buds like synonyms of battle. Depending on your subject, a cup may be a sword, dropped on the tile like a capital “is.” To put away, to be instant, like “the sands of Iwo Jima,” an eager policy toward the nearest sea. Something dreamed a fire would quench it, something drew a finger through the fire.