CALEB NELSON

ABOVE THE LODUCA BROS FACILITY

This American robin    orange in the light    leaps

out of your mouth and into the spring    blue as ever

its tail feathers fanning    like the leaves in the sun    that tickle

your throat  with curious ease      and next you wonder how

possibilities mean anything    actually    or why lo mein delivery

isn’t mandatory or   how to be inside some quantum system   you

don’t understand like Hilbert’s   inseparable space    because it’s so

easy to be lonely   and so indefinitely   in love with you     at the same

time but other days I’m   also   so abandoned   marooned maybe   stretched

out way too thin   beyond   the red ticker tape    like we’re playing some   game

of perpetual waiting      because out here    above the LoDuca Bros facility

there is no hiding anymore    no arrest or stand I could make    to satisfy

your little pleas   of guilt     isn’t this just like us    aren't we as desperate as ever  

aren’t we yearning like fog horns     and tidal waves that only break us down  inside

the mirror    I see the steel sheen    reflected back at me     and I can’t see anything

else    I can't find you    can't see you    don't know where you went

Caleb Nelson is a first year PhD student studying poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Stoneboat, Prick of the Spindle, Red Savina Review, Storm Cellar, Josephine Quarterly, Gravel, Into the Void, and Cardinal Sins.