was like the other years, but different, like
that dream where your house was never yours,
you rattling inside it, then someone gives
you back the ring, gives your mom cancer, your
best friend leaves you for her husband, and then
everyone’s an armadillo rolling
to different rental units. Someone gives
you cancer, and everything rattles loose.
Consider what rattles loose yours. Finders.
Consider the whale, consider the crocus.
Consider the quadrangle. Consider
the lark. Consider me yours. Consider
me gone. Consider my body a body
of theory why I didn’t, or don’t, or do.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 19, Issue 1.
/>Dustin Hellberg is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing in the Department of English Language and Literature, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. He has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and a PhD from EGS, Switzerland. He has two forthcoming books, World Enough (Atropos), a work of criticism, and a book of poems, A Perfect Sphere on a Frictionless Plane (Delere).
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