Matthew Burnside
In dreams we drill a hole into Yes, just to unitch a scratch. Play jump rope with power lines, skip water across stones to steal something that isn’t sold to us in bright blue bottles. Fill our pockets with If, Ever. Miss, Mist, Maybe, aswim through sharper skies swinging elbows like butterfly knives just to feel something real, until our sinking is singing. Cut, touch. Every kill a kind of kiss. Building makeshift tongues to trill the future into something less fricative, something more glide: all the while sonorously screaming Every tree winking darkly, every blade of grass glaring. Wishing for rabbit holes to fall through us.
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Matthew Burnside is the author of Postludes (KERNPUNKT), Rules to Win the Game (Spuyten Duyvil), & the serial hypertext novel Dear Wolfmother (Heavy Feather Review). He teaches at Hollins University.