Max Winter
Where We Have Been Found
New Poems From the USA
 
 

Coming out of a small theater
in a blizzard
I am a box on legs

Is it a feeling or is it a mirage
We are often persuaded by size
to make certain internal connections

For me they happen with accumulations
of luster and reflection
I massage them until they are right

At least I cannot name a building
That has persuaded me, or even seemed to do so

When I experience buildings
I am going through, under or past them
and they make me want to stay at my post
But I cannot call it a persuasion
more an incentive
much like a taste you might want to reclaim
that haunted the side of your tongue
until it dispersed down a side street     gone into the wild

Where are you is the question of the day

They seem to ask it in the little well-lit shops
Of course I may not be listening
It seems like night but it may well be the end of grace
and I could be saying a number of things
but I have this sense that I am not

That inside a small wattled cottage
in the shadow of a mountain of junctures
dialogues and monologues are falling
from a small gray machine
onto the hard white floor
where they are not falling in any order

There was once an order inside the machine
but it was jettisoned to make room
for me, just me
All the way home my face is strangely red