FORCE PERPETUITY
in to narrow
-er narrower
tunnels funnel
-ed down along
a line
lifting
rips
up aside
split ten
-sing
div / id
ed field rings
compu
-tational
sense
the lens
the lift
the lend
the sift
spend
for what
assist
a cyst
grift of
the gift
aligned to much
too narrowly
LEECH SCREED+
dumbfounded
into dumbness
fully dumb
+dumped
of speech
numb in the lungs
unplussed+dechartered
non sequitur sung
out un
+in
+on
to each
anon
along
aloud
among
a moon
rippling
in deep
creek of bile
chorus beached
I am just trying
to congregate here
reaching in
to fire
fir branched
+petrified
woodland fossil
of a dis
-carded tonsil
tensile wrench
of a worm’s
arms unfurling
corded
+chorded
+chortled
+lorded
prone to reptile
lances
thorax engorged
shining corked
on the pile
+crooked
delayed in the weight
I can’t help
but be
the way
down which
the winding-to
leads
the wait
to which
this fire
recedes
encircles
enscreeds
layers of leeches
suckling to a beat
this reach
this reelaround
this hoping
for a breach
-
Zach Peckham is a writer, editor, and educator. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in jubilat, Territory, Poetry Northwest, Always Crashing, Oversound, American Book Review, Annulet, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from the NEOMFA and teaches at Cleveland State and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the managing editor at the CSU Poetry Center and editor-at-large of the Cleveland Review of Books. He also runs a small press called Community Mausoleum and a journal called Coma.