The day is a day now that I’ve sat on the branches above the aging crocodiles, taunted them with my libidinous song. The secret is in marking time,
marking the many snaps of the crocodiles’ jaws and how far their whines travel in this watery muck. Across the street are lawyers and law clerks,
doctors and assistants to the world’s gray empire docking overnight. They watch me and fold their wrinkled clothes, their brows burrowing
past skin and bone and mind. What does it say on their papers? Am I meeting or exceeding expectations, or has some variant appeared like a Christ?
I remember this morning like it was yesterday when the mares were just fauns and the fauns were just tadpoles wafting on the air
their conniving dreams. I remember sleeping with you, blue night, in your redundancy, letting my lids droop their delirious thoughts
like what a plane I’ve been dragging my interminable sun. I remember the locust as the locust would, awoken as if in a library of locusts, strange thing once said
vibrating on translucent wings. I remember picking up a shell without that thing, which forced men into circles, made them slaves.
73 The Paris-American
ChristopherKondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, a New Measure Poetry Prize finalist, which was recently published in the Free Verse Editions poetry series by Parlor Press. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Cimarron Review, Free Verse, Meridian, Seneca Review, Verse Daily and Washington Square. He holds degrees from Fordham University, Columbia University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver where he is an editor for Denver Quarterly.
Next week's poet:
Roger Reeves Winner of the 2013 The Paris-American Reading Series Contest
