Blood

My mind blooms
outside the pawn
shop window.                                                                                             
I am struck                                                                                               
dumb by knives                                                                                        
in their morgue                                                                                
-like brilliance.                                                                                    
All I want is good                                                                                
blade, an edge.                                                                                              
Some cool                                                                                            
distance from                                                                                            
my life, this sleet,                                                                                
this rust, my shoes                                                                                        
that flicker like                                                                                    
sour flames                                                                                                
at the end                                                                                                       
at the end of                                                                                               
the weird alley                                                                                            
where blood                                                                                                    
goes to clot.

ξ

DECORATIONS FOR A MOOD NOCTURNE

          after Wallace Stevens

          1    

Pianissimo played the piano in the rain.                                                                  
A quiet playing for a quiet rain.                                                                              
The day was grey, then was blue.                                                                           
The day became a sea for you.

          2

Thinking of you, thinking of you.                                                                                             
Thinking of the color blue.                                                                                        
Thinking, thinking is all one can do.                                                                                      
Unless such thinking produce the color blue.

          3

In Florida, the starry sky a pleasure that leans upon the gate, 
an effort nonchalant, of posture humid, sultry, constellate.   
But when the lunar car departs it drags its folded iron weight     
across the dawn like a castle door, an egress sublimate.

          4

Crispin. Crispin. Crispin. Present yea or nay?                                                            
The lines you gave to terra firma, one is compelled to say,                                                                 
Exact in pedal forms and fugal pulminations, so yea.                                                     
Yet hatreds they do betray, many hatreds, so also nay.

ξ

Jon Cone is a writer who lives in Iowa City. His published works include LEAST (Greying Ghost), THE PLESYRE BARGE (Greying Ghost), SITTING GETTING UP SITTING AGAIN (Standing Guard in a Cornfield Press), FAMILY PORTRAIT WITH TWO DOGS BLEEDING (Phrygian Press), as well he has appeared in several anthologies and numerous journals both online and in print. His most recrnt collection is COLD HOUSE (Espresso-Chapbooks), published in 2017.