Poetry

Hyla Howling (2019): A Non-Linear Verse for Lee Hyla

Ben Hjertmann
Jittering blissful on jagged avenue
Swelling up in Frownland
Unstuck and still smiling

Curling lupine guts
In flattened-rat alleys
Gripping smirk in leaky pocket

American crickets sang to our dunces
Starfucked and joyous-furious
 
In crow posture on a folding chair
Free to flail and fall in chestward
 
Known of Under and The Great Whatever
Near as snout with breath on the window
Nocturne nascent, grateful desolate
Resolved and unresigned
 
 
Green letters in a sealed room
Signed of their unknowing
Scribble-scrawled in the roaring wake of the muse
Spit-forged and stealing to her vapor trail
 
Resounding granite knells
Shattered ruins renewed
Spiraled dances of unnamed spirits
Harvesting howls of hammered strings
 
Down to the windy beach
Rows of antique rugs
Pages dirtied and swiftly wrapped
And the tunnel south from the cantina
As the waves on concrete ruins
These chapters like that
Giving to begin

Hyla Howling (2019): A Non-Linear Verse for Lee Hyla