Fact: I do
strike twice. Fact:
not one blade
of whirling
grass can side-
step my burst,
divergent
lightbulbs. I
plant my thoughts
where maps aren’t
yet drawn; I
ladder down
through trees, drunks,
and steeples.
Close your eyes.
I preserve
what you last
spied. Your world
is no more
than my af-
ter image.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 20, Issue 2.
Derek Mong is the author of two poetry collections from Saturnalia Books—Other Romes (2011) and The Identity Thief (2018)—and a recent chapbook from Two Sylvias Press, The Ego and the Empiricist (2017). He and his wife, Anne O. Fisher, won the 2018 Cliff Becker Translation Prize for The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin, forthcoming from White Pine Press.
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