Weston Cutter
I used to think everything was part of a larger conversation

but maybe there’s only the boats
susurrating to the buoys + shore. Look:
if you see boats in every direction
you’re either from where I know, a place
which kisses some lake too much
to call anything other than great, or you’re
hollow and hankering to be filled
in. Along the bike path mornings after
storm the blown branches betray
how thin the myth of connectivity re
mains despite facebookery + www.
whatever.com yr even now telling yrself
u won’t waste such hours browsing.
Tomorrow. We all want to be filled in, all
hope we’re the choicest blank form
yet devised. Let’s find fire + stand honest
before it: at the Chinese diner where yes
terday I ate lunch there waited by the door
a box marked Lost and Founded, in it
the usual, hats counter-toply abandoned,
shirts left ghosting chair backs as
owners bolted. Who knows why boats
or half-empty boxes in doorways
draw note: a woman I once knew as well
as weather cried weeks because she
was sorrowed by the lack of a thing the size
of a bean. Nothing’s the same size
as how we carry it deeper in, beneath what’s
been lost and/or founded: I used
to think I knew what drinks to order all
my friends, what stories to tell to tug
them from the murk we all occasionally sink
into, lately all I know is salt, how sweat
can find a reservoir in any elbow, how tears
end wherever they’ve spent their viscosity.
Let’s build satisfied tongues with whatever’s
been left here + let’s say what we can.

Beefeater Drowns

Unlike the taste of D I can still
without blush or suffering
recall the way that first gin hit
while we sat
pretending next to each other
we didn’t know the shape
night was taking as it scalloped
day’s edges
blue to thicker blue. gin and mint
she’d texted from miles
out, + tonic 2: the list of what
I should be
ready for her to want once she
arrived with her Minnesota
thirst + shed-everywhere dog.
bet i can get
you thirsty too she texted some
miles later + I did not fall
asleep thinking the usual could
this be
thoughts—her name, how her
tongue, loosened by drink,
slid through come on. We believed
a shared
start carried merit, that electricity
formed from the fact that
we both meant the same place
when we
spoke home. Perhaps we’d begun
to run from
the same gun’s report. I slept
on my arm so hard I felt
nothing for the day’s first half
hour, D
on waking didn’t or couldn’t
or wouldn’t stop blinking:
we came of age near the mouths
of moving
water, knew how thin the line
between fast flow + flood.
that was a nice boat she didn’t text
as she drove
the next day away, both of us
guilty of buying, again, tricks
of liquidity, though buoyancy’s no
measure +
nothing we kissed rhymed with shore.

live blogging the snowfall

a letter at a time, word typed
for each eave more coated
by the minute, you’d think

it’d have to stop and you’d be
right depending on how long
a view you’ll take says spring,

says muddy tires, says the body’s
recollection of fresh flesh
pushed against ancient

process. Ahem: processes,
like there’s only one way
to slide safe into second,

to shout ready or not here
I come. Where I come from
we finish each other’s sen

-tences when we’ve had
enough beer + are within reach
of a river, where my love’s

from they believe wind’s
one of god’s great traits, they
turn cheeks like the devout

kneel. We take the long
view together after dinner,
glance at the everywhere

all the time fuck-it’s-nevergonna-
stop snow + we’re
sedimentary lovers, know

the sway of transformative
heat + time on layers of muck
and how stone will later be cut,

used for buildings we can’t
yet imagine. She says I’m cold,
I say so am I, thank you snowfall.
Signing off.

from the Invisible Cities issue (TLR, Spring 2013)

Weston Cutter is from Minnesota and is the author of All Black Everything and You’d Be a Stranger, Too.