Soul with Rectangle of Light
My soul is a contract
unbacked by images. A merger
or a fold, part flat beaux-arts roof, part
second floor
gothic home be
low a
glow(er)ing cloud
pregnant sleeveless
heaving.
Trashed erstwhile white rectangle
of light from which film grew. E
ternal storm frowning into
paradise’s E E E
mergency Room.
Seascape
Courbet’s wave to the left
of a real wave outside mid-crest
winter’s this peeling trompe l’oeil
in the corner, reverse side
of framed painting i stand before
blinking
snow-dumb and psyched
a line that was i or firm
ament’s eccentric’r part spinning
snowlike over hot sidewalk
grate i melt between the declining
wave and the one that stays
Grow a Simple Soul
made from a substance un
diminished by subtraction.
its less neither less nor
delinquent eerie vertical
iridescent white square of sky
moves
cold over me more
on
this horizontal boulevard
in New Jersey. a film strip
modulates energy. in the end,
nothing
but sea
deleting
what sea seizes.
35 mm
i see you at the edge
of a rinsed beam
of street then never
again ever ever
dot in snow-fuzzed dis
tance trance-
inducing but
THE BEAM OF LIGHT UNMODULATED FOR AN INSTANT is placeless
cuts
my words
as they whirl
breakneck into the white bright beam
towards you
Emmalea Russo's most recent book of poetry is Confetti (Hyperidean, 2022). Her next, Magenta, is forthcoming later this year.