b) When the Clouds Break
Daniel Biegelson
to reveal a city of brick or glass. Steel girder or tinted and tilted skies. Coastline or seawall. Surge. How can the market keep rising without a question mark. Is this too far afield for something so serious. I am trying to come to the point—the antenna sends and receives. I am trying to break your heart— the earth tides and the sea tides rise and subside. Incrementally or suddenly. We work and we compose—the conductor he’s weary / he’s still stuck on the line. And will be at some point beyond us as the arc moves us. Glaciers fall to the ocean and take on a different identity. We wonder if we must bear witness to believe. To return to the impossible point of departure. The train takes us to a city once a forest and a forest once a city. We pass demolished buildings and rusted I-beams and rebar spokes and cars stacked upon cars. We hope and alter little. We return to the terrestrial. The dark territory. The night terrors. The night sky stirs in retreat from the earth—a turbid string of starlight.
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Daniel Biegelson is Director of the Visiting Writers Series at Northwest Missouri State University and Associate Editor for The Laurel Review. Biegelson's poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Denver Quarterly, Jellyfish Magazine, Meridian, New Orleans Review, The Portland Review, and VERSE, amongst other places. He was a finalist for the 2016 Tomaž Šalamun Chapbook Prize and the 2015 42 Miles Press Award.