New Poem by Todd Swift

Face of the Author

At last the closing of the day

opens the window to a face.

A self-setting, a moon;

blind spirit – awareness-glass

that devils the stare.

Cannot bear to go on seeing eyes, hair –

all that style – what style evades –

a god beneath reflection?

Behind the head two horns shoot off –

a highway in the desert; demons.

One called for ecstatic words; shelves

bare as crowless fields after harvest.

Winter’s sterility licking the countryside

with low white yields of nothingness –

that blessed root to pull – uncovering

yet more of least.  Least rises.  I stare

onto a page ink throws back, an alibi

lying set down, a shaving bite of teeth.

Buildings past the jocund face pimple

me bright, I’m architectured, stone

and wood, no less here than there.

Can’t be good to rehearse a loss

in verse; not this voice –

how it wants to start and end out of

a transient apercu – discursive glancing up

pained, forming opinions, a U-turning moan.

The man across from the poet looks so queer.

Only when the library closes do we disappear.

UEA, December 7, 2010