The Drowning Gull 1 | Page 11

Wallflower II

by Stephen Mead

Is this table disappearing, all edges in a meld

With my hands & the wall?

The fork goes into cloth whole

As the ashtray & the plate follows after.

I clutch my wine glass & am receding myself now.

Absorbed, the candle, the rose, as one, become

A single stalk.

OK then, I’ll climb it, rise from the wax fog,

A taper still as anything, meaning as nothing

At all.

Fanning tongue after tongue, what a jungle of mist,

This, & how strange, an enchantment to find oneself

Grown invisible as a wilderness blipped into static

With a flick of the wrist, the channel just changed

& I in between still somehow real

Issue #1

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