Ersatz Lamplighter
by Weston Cutter
Add rain to your amazements : next offer end -less praise for the soft ways your body
contains its hallelujahs+lamentations : remember radio : such waves : how as a kid
you'd touch your face imagining your hand someone else's as the Top-10 torchsong melted
you yet again : +still how each forgettable fire of breath you take's braided : to
verse/chorus/verse /chorus/I used to like this band before everyone else did : +how
little first matters : how it's the singalong instinct that carries : your voice goes
here too : I need you as much as we both need each month's lunar striptease : these
come with me spirits we're born into : these slipstream ways we're shaped by love
: +the thought of losing what love we've stuffed like gumwrappers in our pockets :
+all the love we can't see because we don't believe we've earned it : plus existence
: even dark shit once lived -through : reckoned-with : is worth some shimmy : some
shake : some twist+itch to shout something : utterance big enough to tie like a parachute
to these snippets of the infinite that bloom sudden from absolute nothing : magnificent
in their flimsiness : the way each daughter smiled at me : six weeks old : simply
because I too smiled : or who knows : could've been gas : or those moments I've shirked
language like a sloughed-off blanket+find myself as warm without : you know this :
you've tried, too : with lips or other instruments you've sought ways to keep unsaying
the unspeakable : impossible instants pooling so wide+deep the rest of your life stays
wet with them : look up with me : another day : sky : gray or blue as the truth each
river's trying to enunciate : now look down : how the ground (like any biding-time
lover) plays cool tho it longs to hold us : this is all any of us can do : tell each
other what we can : how I'll miss you soon is the sum of sweetness each strawberry
means : come clean with me : don't you too wake hoping to find balance : all the while
never wondering if balance wants to find us : swirl of snow as dark threads day shut
: another year nearly wrapped thick around the trunk of our hearts : +that old electric
ache as we come again to realize we may never know what we're here to be : say : move
: believe : we dance so different : hearts stuck on the same drumbeat : our wild softness+
doubtful wonder : our warm fragility+these hands : so restless to make sure certain
fires remain lit.
Weston Cutter is from Minnesota and runs Haven Watch Co.