Torqued, unto a portal
Thrummed ere hoofs revel, hover
Half-notes in the in
Nocturns of the quartet—exiled its score
At the center at the stone
Whorl fixes square to its orbit
Through which the center of Carcassonne
Slips, like a glass of Pilsner in the east
End of London, in the heart—quartered into
Lightning
courses litmus
mists hard-hot electrics.
In a beautiful in a day cut
By sun picks a lock to
Shine whose shimmer
Turns to patina turns
Like a flower like a flower
Drafted in steel lit by stars
Across a river threads that which outskirts
Carcassonne, that step by step through
The lock keeps the telos and telescopes
All the and all the way to
The Camargue—revelations of
Flamingoes in the shadows of bulls
And feed in divots made by salt-colored horses.
Adam Strauss lives in Louisville, KY. Poems of his appear in the Brooklyn Rail and New American Writing. He adores the early canvasses of Marc Chagall.
