[NOW]
by nathan spoon
a word is appearing
on your right hand and again
on your left hand [now] the same word
is shining on your forehead
in the beginning of the idea before
you were what you [now] are
a figure almost a being of sorts
differentiated as you
before you settled
to watery simulacrum breathing in
and out you moved your fingers and toes
on the banks of a burbling river
then when
we met I became you and you became
who I was
[now]
we are here
[now] we are back from the dead
[now] we are disturbing and overwhelming
whatever it is we are doing [now]
we don’t remember forgive us
as antlers emerge out of air
and when nobody is looking we
are brittle as the earth under
the double vastness of northern sky
Nathan Spoon is an autistic poet with learning disabilities whose poems appear or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review,
Columbia Journal, The Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, and Poetry. His debut collection, Doomsday Bunker, was published in 2017.
He is editor of Queerly.