Critical Assays
3/19/2023, Con/Jur/d

I didn’t get it wrong
not right, per se
not wrong either
an essay is a 

Working out of a particular idea

Assays are a

Wearing, like a skin, intimate
and dangerous without 
instrumentalization

When I’d just left home
a college freshman, filled with
self-deprecating vim and vigor
I had a big dream, big because
remember it’s 40 years later, and

THE FULL MOON RISES

he’d always had a touch of
Lunacy, rising in the dream
over the endless pines, dotted
with small towns, he could feel
it transform him, Lycanthropy
not a child’s obsession
a self-cannibalizing
impulse, eating
everything
away

a lie
of old flesh
continues 

They chase
me becomes we 
pitchforks and torches tools 
for locking
us into the 
first person 
singular

Trapped forever in I

At a certain threshold
maybe a death, maybe a 
breakup or the Sun crosses
an invisible line, sudden
Spring shimmer
as real as pollinated 
air, or the slant of
light across
porch slats

Age shows 
we were always we

an amalgam of compounds
unchanging, and yet
in constant flux
you and I
like this.