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.