What Rough Beast | Poem for October 13, 2018

Shannon Lippert
Insomniac Season

There are weights dug into your skin.
But you are used to them now, though every once in a while
they catch
on something in the room, something on the news,
what’s wrong with a little less meat on your bones? You wonder.
There’s a time for such worries; there’s a period where wakefulness
is a little like sleeping
without the respite. Someone standing in your corners—
By that, I mean, of course, the corners of your eyes.

Tastes like a pound of wadded up fabric
and have you ever heard of spring so hot
or wait, is it,
November—without all the holidays,
just attrition beside the carcasses
And through it all you find yourself yawning.
This uncertain, dreamlike occasion
with all the music you can hear, just underwater
so the songs come out all twisted up and vague
and did you hear what he said today, did you see—oh.

How could you with all the sleep stuck in your eyes?
It could never be washed away, not with a million sunsets.
Today is like walking through thunder, for a second it’s paralyzing, chaotic, and afterwards
it’s kind of lonely without it, kind of strange
to think of this raw energy as a companion. But you can feel it in your bones forever:
Exhausting.
Like a car without proper ventilation,
the wheels spinning on, through nothing, brick on the gas
while everything slowly turns airless
and that’s when you try to breathe.

Shannon Lippert is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in episode 55 of the Glittership podcast, and has been published in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.

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