Each Sunday I play pool with eyeballs for billiard balls
at the Other Place & envision what it might be like to be touched
by felt & fluorescence in alternation. The light of passing cars
filters occasionally through our pitchers of PBR. I know no metaphor
for sight, yet the beams protrude, pint shaped,
from the sockets of anonymous angels. Lines sharp as axe blades
gently part the trees, then brush away before the fall.
You ask where the terror is located—
Is it in the horse yet to be broken or the broken horse?

I’m embarrassed by my telos,
a stance of cue balls awaiting sticks. The future
perfect will be an ongoing breeze. I have no theory
for dream without waking. Falling from the lake onto the shore,
I wanted to know how you felt about the hurricane
hoarding air above the Atlantic, the one that shares a name
with your lover. Instead, I zipped my coat against the wind —
whose breath? A thin horse swept up from the South
and kicked my eyeballs back into their dark pockets.

Luke Burton is a poet and artist writing from Burlington, Vermont. His work has appeared in Crossroads Magazine, The Redlands Review, Pomeroy Poets Anthology, Bard Papers, and more. He is a senior Editor at GENERAL SUBJECT and NO SUBJECT Press.