Tetrahedrons
To make philosophy a living
Corner the world of basics
Consent to unskillfulness
Strategize without debauchery – Why?
Infiltrating blockages
But does a line have a shape?
Does it know it has a mood?
Does it know it makes a face?
Does a line think? When you are unmoved?
Never mind that there is landscape and weather
A poem for four hands in progress
It stills pewter, and makes a bane of romp
Uncircumstantial
I am at a clean remove from fate and sickening
The robust tercet disqualifies me
So I mutate, transfigure
Excuse myself from the brutality of the stanza
I did not know rhyme’s history could be ablated
I sunk in
Gorged on whisper
I became slick, goo
Ring-like and opportune
I listened for deviancy
Was it fog?
Or just happy?
The present is an affection
And knowing that secrecy is best kept open I flung myself on the pyre of speaking
For no other reason in it to be cryptonometer
than to belong as in waking animalia
piously indifferent the severance of titillated mood
fangled lachrymal definitude make waxing cum
make surreptitiously loud
meaning defiance + attitude again, divide
it is the woodworking soul in figurines the walk
that most braved form quite expletive although never on time
it is a fitting remark to be gay and indolent
here to deny the twilight speech I am more hiveranal more
since I was never childlike only testimony
if it is in conjugations only
that define appropriateness and touch
I wring out the mark
Prathna Lor is the author of two chapbooks, Ventriloquism (Future Tense Books, 2010) and 7, 2 (Knife | Fork | Book, 2019). Their writing has also appeared in DIAGRAM, C Magazine, Jacket2, and Canadian Literature, among other places.