Interregnum
Robert Whitehead
The villainy was
being found
wanting.
The other man
only took me
down
to where
I could be robbed.
In the mirror
I opaqued,
I seemed
alterable as a horizon.
When I tried to wave
a stranger
waved back—
What do you want
with me?
The other man
had me zip into
one too many costumes,
told me
to imagine the stone face
under which
a blank deity
arranges its charms.
I touched
not him
but the image of him.
Then I saw
the boundary
fleetingly iridesce,
a split screen
undoing us.
I was lost
a moment
at the tall altar of crisis.
I was
the starry cope
under which the promise
of restoration
set down
its dark terms:
what do you want
but the brief trap
of being whole,
what wanting are you
when, in your raw
regalia,
you let the other man
lift up
the tried heart
like an artifact
and place it back down
a lit forge?
Robert Whitehead is a poet living in Brooklyn. More at robertmwhitehead.com.
Robert Whitehead
The villainy was
being found
wanting.
The other man
only took me
down
to where
I could be robbed.
In the mirror
I opaqued,
I seemed
alterable as a horizon.
When I tried to wave
a stranger
waved back—
What do you want
with me?
The other man
had me zip into
one too many costumes,
told me
to imagine the stone face
under which
a blank deity
arranges its charms.
I touched
not him
but the image of him.
Then I saw
the boundary
fleetingly iridesce,
a split screen
undoing us.
I was lost
a moment
at the tall altar of crisis.
I was
the starry cope
under which the promise
of restoration
set down
its dark terms:
what do you want
but the brief trap
of being whole,
what wanting are you
when, in your raw
regalia,
you let the other man
lift up
the tried heart
like an artifact
and place it back down
a lit forge?
Robert Whitehead is a poet living in Brooklyn. More at robertmwhitehead.com.