Weston Cutter
Way off the Water
way off the water
nature will thread
narrative to whatever
needle yr glance casts:
there aren’t enough
post-its in the
entire world for
all the words
I hope to stick:
to my bed-head hair
I want a note reading
I want yr fingers
in my sockets, dear,
fuse blown + lights out —
love, if it is real,
is just as clearly
seen in the dark:
cross the bridge:
boat at river’s edge:
look behind you, start
a line, carry it
through what-
ever you think
you should be stitched to
Revelation
I am not the god I once imagined
I could be, am not of
enough lightning or benevolence.
These trees. This wind. These bendy
straws I can tug any poison through.
I am talking again because gods
when they cannot cast thunder or smite
talk and talk and someday creatures
from these words. Someday swans.
Someday a shroud someone I love
may never wear will feature
trace remnants of my form like faint radar beeping
through the scariest parts
of submarine movies, meaning
I’m the scariest part, meaning
do you feel that water
and how I can influence it? Pretend
you’ve never thought yourself moon, or
if not moon what’s sung to it, or
if not moon the madness
it supposedly helps usher in. Pretend
you’ve never thought yourself something
sung. Someday the harmonica
of my greatness will be blown
through hill + valley or someday the stones
of my years will be bound as rosaries
+ played at, fingered through calamity. Am I not
something to hold onto in calamity?
Am I not already on someone’s radar? Here, gods: find me. Refill
my cup and tell me I lack sufficient per-
cussion, that my fate’s drumsticks
can’t make your Olympic timpanis rum-
ble, that my years don’t add up
to any prayer. Tell me I’m no god be-
cause I fear the trembling a good round
of forgiveness sets off and that
being god
means smiting and forgiving
there’s no other way. Tell me everyone’s
a moon + this stormlife is just
a matter of finding what
to orbit, what to let sing to us. Tell me
the scariest part is never the scariest part,
something I don’t already know.
