REALISM
Every time I
make a keystroke
A dollar is removed
From my bank account
Via direct
"Subtraction." I am
Exiled here in the name
Of what? The shock
Of watching a man hit
Another man with
A bag of broken
Lanterns, this mean-
Spirited auto
Mechanic? Shy and
Cowering—that's how
We perceive the other
Two characters.
One wants love. One wants
Methamphetamine.
What does the third one
Want? O let's all write
A lyric poem. In the
Final verses the
Soul shifts silver and
Black like window wind.
Now for the novel:
Nobody dies, or prospers.
AUTONOMOUS If I drink a liquid and there are chunks floating in it it's disgusting unless the chunks are ice. My mind, the files that are my mind. Let me be ice as I pass from one world to another, intact. What I fear is waking up not me. But why fear that? We are hunters but mostly gatherers. Waking into the day is a dissolve, a subtraction. We lose who we are as we attach once again to our things. Emerson: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
David Dodd Lee is the author of ten books of poetry, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), as well as a forthcoming book of collages, erasure poems, and original poems, entitled Unlucky Animals. In 2020, his short story, “Hawks,” was selected for inclusion in the annual Best Short Fictions anthology, published by Sonder Press. He writes and makes visual art and kayaks in Northern Indiana, where he lives on the St. Joseph River. He is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University South Bend, where he is also Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.