Three Poems from REND by Geoffrey Olsen

*

crease. we fling spring utter abandonment flits spent eyeward

went unheard, the spells, our shudder creases bleak days paring

watching as it turns to diffidence self-figures all selfishly

individuated amid the grid, arrests the pigs, stern so it: worth

waits on worthless, a spot of land arbitrary and blued

pent and spent suspicious, eyes the cross, hating hating blent

and spent, crèche shuddering, there between knee a sentencing

*

psychopathetic given to the grease, grins sneering

hardens as sound thoughtful truce pieced from sine waving

each accident tapped digital warping feel, then my pen

failing fascisms darlings automata, emanate prediction as death

ditch sprawling fibrous mass delightful feeding receptors

exceptional: can this continue? can the sound enfold? can that extend

of pervasive shattering pleased each squeezed prize

*

into our peels of doom song desperate and of use to no

one in no form broken, crashing, shambles, benched

barriers our desiccated fields, not ours, uncedes

then scaly flesh, pressing cicatrices in time debt to the physical

blooms medium accent for mediums, modulate in marrow

twice writ bound as that turns. sentience

it’s as pulse so it reads or rends as pleased

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Geoffrey Olsen is the author of five chapbooks, most recently Livid Remainders (above/ground press 2023). His first book Nerves Between Song will be published by Beautiful Days Press this spring. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.