A Poem by Mark Conway

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

in head stones

the sun is real but lies :: it’s much older than its age; by now the excess visions have all been booked / the best are overused… the river runs through dinkytown accepting all its slops our town fish live — celebrities – scavenging on chemicals and tripe / what they eat helps them eat up what they eat: sweet genetic engineering; we posit they prefer this rise in appetite… anymore there are no visions / no visors needed neither nor sun screen to block the once- anticipated vision burn / oh shit mon petit there simply isn’t time: the sun runs like honey through the molten hive :: it’s said the tiny occupants can sting or hump just once then clatter gladly to the floor: the sun is real but lies / you stop time by simply ceasing breathing: death is how you see behind: the way you know someone is back there when that certain someone stares

Mark Conway’s poem is from a new manuscript with the working title Fuse. Other poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, the Virginia Quarterly Review and Field.

*You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.*