The Awaited Curse

A Poem

When breath swallows the collision of bodies that shouldn’t have been in the way the open-mouth realization that no yawn is going to show up But like it’s jammed up like the mechanism of the jaw has been repealed like a costly law there’s only the nose to prevent us from feeling like we’re not completely surrounded by any kind of silence We work on our myth like it is the kind of object that must be made and kind of reflective or oriented to the back of the skull Sweet moments go by so fast and take up the gauntlets rather than sit down for the sting that has to be coming A wine pressed further into the ground but not as an offering as a system of spite that crashes into verdicts and yellowed sympathizers The scarred masks and flags of the last fight barely able to catch the wind anymore and if they do it merely takes them farther away

J.D. Harms 2020