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10/3/13

Evan Iresmith

Stations

Out by the sawdust incinerator
lies a pile of wet grass and pop
cans as high as Elliot feels low.
He says he’s more a glass robot
than himself, this life. Patricia
doesn’t argue with his sentiment.
Inside me is a fat man I wish were
a momentary tape worm: She says
things like that all the time. And:
I’ll get a flu shot if it kills me! In
addition: Emily Dickinson, like
the moon, had Asperger’s. What
the hell are you talking about? is
what Elliot counters, his arms
propped on a chair just a bit less
awkwardly than a mannequin
might. Oh, Patricia jests, her hands
wafting upward like a mock gray
dove (sans olive branch). Elliot
frowns above the gesture. You
know, I wish we didn’t commu-
nicate like fucking morning DJs,
Elliot says, meaning it. Patricia
wah-wah-wahs into her coffee.
The sky, for one, doesn’t laugh.



Like Sunlit Gaps in a Leaf

A through-line surfaced in a low-key life: mine.
Grace lost out to summer ennui and the change

in my backpocket. Sorry, grace. I was never pure
or proper anything. I’m more a rumor on stand-

by, that selfish, off boy who might be me at my
worst. My veins: body-long, unelectric-blue. I’m

getting used to dreaming without love. I’d go to
war so that we’d always have addictions; I’d box a

poem in place of dreading my own news. It’s funny,
you might say. Your touch will take me ages to forget.




Evan Iresmith is not from around here. He might like a tomato garden someday. For now, Evan lives in a New York apartment, like almost anybody.

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