THE READER'S PICK-UP LINES by matt robinson

you should know it’s colder, here, and
cooling. know that mere fictitious harms
done dogs reduce me to what would pass, in
certain climes, for geysered tears; offending
pages thumbed at times pulp-raw, wrung
sweaty-fisted and feral-moist as some left
load of half-done laundry unearthed near-
braided at the far edge of some lake’s humid
cottage-weekend bounty. you should know
each new myopic glance salts my field of
vision; this book a wretched, sodden earth;
unturned. pulp fiction parallax. and you well
know, it’s been suggested, the bark is far
worse than the bite. so, you should know i
set my teeth, and seethe all ortho-tacit; suck
breath after breath after breath. just know i
siphon this air, aphonic – a newly fossiled
fuel; under-tapped, but still well well-headed.
you should know, this is to say, no one other
thing lingers like this telling on the palate;
none spill-slicks congruent along the throat’s
tricky, unmapped shoreline; none sullies that
gulf akin. now, tell me: would you – could
you – be tempted by some gin?
Matt Robinson is a Halifax-based poet

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