Chris Toll

My Name Is Writ in Water

My airport
turns on the TV
and falls asleep
in the easy chair.
My bookstore
screws a silencer
onto a pistol.
My insane asylum
plays solitaire
all night long.

---

Song of Magnetic Service

The wind whispers to a river,
"Dear Child,
you don't know loneliness yet."
We buy our wedding rings
in a pawnshop.
The past will be redeemed
by the love to come.
You have bluffs
in your soul
where I can stand
and see a hundred miles of you.
I have a hundred years of sorrow
in my eyes.
O Holy Heart,
you will be my joy
on the day the world ends.

These poems were originally published in the PG chapbook I'll Be the Invisible Girl Till the Day I Die. Read the whole collection online at Chapbook Genius.

Chris Toll is a poet and collagemaker who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. He co-curates the Benevolent Armchair Reading Series. His next book will come out in 2011. It will be called: The Disinformation Phase.

November 2010 marks four years of PGP, and Everyday Genius is marking the occasion all month by publishing work from its archives as well as IsReads, Chapbook Genius and excerpts from some of PGP's books.