After everything that has been forgotten had really happened
he liked to wear a white shirt again too big for him now
sweating in it smoking a whole cigarette
uncrowded the quiet
to
go back over it all a map on a shroud a return to every island prison
his poems in jars buried how many paces from
which little fig tree
under
every word a dead comrade an icon or a slogan
statues waiting in line silence no refuge
plaster matches
we
were presenting our noses & arms to the surgeons & the prosecutors
he could hear atrocities becoming alleged
activities
it
was a mistake to record any event even breath as Language disporting
instead he would take off his white shirt each
dawn & wash it
&
pound it clean then spread it out to dry on a boulder by the shore
I am the blank target open-armed in Goya’s painting of the firing squad
I am the dough of the letter Ψ drying warm in the ancient sunlight
Phil Hall . Lake’s End . 2026
Phil Hall — two new chapbooks out this year: The Loon Poems by Vera Lake (Flat Singles), and Rice Lake Waltz (Drift/Line). Recent poems also at Public Reverie, Discordia Review, and Bad Dog mag. Writes near Perth ON.