Elegant Chaos
After a while you learn to hear the world.
Like a grape swelling on the vine,
or a goat clattering up a ridge,
you hear it as well as you see through a pair of scratched binoculars,
or listen to a philosophy that could only be conjured
while drinking gin on a kaput
Greyhound somewhere between Memphis
and Little Rock—think sober Elvis.
Imagine Venice with its canals
dried-out and used for go-cart racing.
It could happen. An Italian Graceland fit for a King.
Call it the resurgence of the Monarchy.
I know this is difficult to follow,
but no matter how hollow it sounds,
there’s no such thing as an empty forty-gallon drum.
Moths remind us we are all colorblind,
and when the tiller goes to rust,
it’s never long before our stomachs
remind us of our hunger, so stop weeping and plunge the spoon
into the grapefruit that is neither grape nor fruit.
The damage is done. Let moonlight
stroll on a spider’s web, and the gutter loosen its leaves.
The world cannot sing louder
than a sparrow when it swallows a cloud.
The Hologram
Call time a wave of light
twisting in your eye.
Your eye the eye.
Tie-dye swirled into a
multi-colored maze—
a translucent miasma
figuring this fractal
we call existence like
a numberless calculator,
each face simplified
by a lens shuddering
against diamond-cut
glass, the image
caught like a dove
in a dog’s mouth—
an inescapable flash,
and you say like I say
No shadows on my wall!
Your arms chained
above you—your clay feet
unmoving like an altar
fastened to earth—
reach for light, but you
stay there, warm
in your blue Snuggie,
watching reality TV
with a worse version
of yourself. To lift
the veil, break free,
means nothing to you.
You’re fine there.
What I’m saying is
ludicrous. I’m in the
cave, not you. Maybe
we’re both in the cave.
Or different caves.
Either way, why are we
so afraid to embrace
each other like our atomic
selves are so wont to do,
our bodies forming
within the rods
and cones of our eyes?
When will we see the image
of our own image?
Pillars of salt, we are,
so busy with excuses,
our perpetual turning back.
Kerry James Evans is the recipient of a 2015 NEA Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers' Conference, and his poems have appeared in Agni, New England Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals. He is the author of Bangalore (Copper Canyon). He lives and works in St. Louis.