Image by Vladimir Chuchadeev, courtesy of Unsplash
Discipline
By Carl Phillips
First thought: the speckled darkness
was a storm’s arrival shocking birds
from their perches.
Second thought: not birds, suddenly up,
but a hand across, five digits their own
five violences:
betrayal, velocity, bloodtooth, quiver, “will he return?”
Then thinking itself became uncanny.
Cheek forced to blush, head still
thrown awry as though from pleasure,
such that pleasure was refashioned: storm, feathers, vast blur.
Phillip B. Williams reads “Discipline”
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