Tyler Wettig Verse-Virtual 2018 January

January 2018

I live with my two cats, Abe Lincoln and George Washington, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My latest chapbook is Men in Togas Looking at Fruit (Zetataurus, 2016). My website: https://tylerwettig.wordpress.com/.

Sonnet for the Unmarried

It’s Bach on the stereo: Brandenburg
Concerto, third movement: I prefer a
slower rendition, I remark. But to-
night, I like the urgency. Some botched
cookies on the dinner table. We scrape
the usable parts, nibble the crumbles.
She hands me a book of her poetry:
I sit, cross-legged on the couch, cat in
my lap, thumb through the worn pages. She writes,
someday, my prince will come, and the music
fades. We’re washing dishes; she’s greying a
bit. I excuse myself to the bathroom.
The hand-towel says believe, and I do,
having just lived the future, as I did.

Man on Fire II

I’m a late-blooming Buddhist in an abandoned
garden: possibility tenderly pruned but so festers
like an open wound. I dwell in probabilities—
every word, a calculation. Every moment, a nimbus:

drizzle as we make our way out of the bookstore.
My therapist tells me I need to face my ultimate
fear. My wife tells me I need to fix my taillight.

So let me be abandoned. Half-blind in the dark.
I pass a stranded motorist on the way home.
I want to pull over to help him, only for him
to bludgeon me.

Any catharsis to belie this coil, this samsara.
I’d rather have a season in hell.

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