Keratoconus by Rob Cook | Really System: Issue Eight

Keratoconus

Rob Cook

The book, measured
in abandoned
pages,

falls

asleep under
the weight of my factory-
assembled,

find-nothing, gas permeable eyes,

each lens made for the fewest
blinks and a corrected
but still imaginary
view of others.

The beings
that populate my steep-sloped
corneas tell me

they are better able to inhabit
the shard plazas

where they take the minutes
apart and heal
the glare of what those afternoons
leave behind,

dark circles that collect
under the eyes like body bags,

and by road
or walkway
or drink-depth,
I recognize each high-beam
that swims and bends and stabs,

attacking my bloodshot snipers
at this level of existence,
where every face
in every car
slithers with shadows
decapitated in their unseen wars.

Rob Cook's latest book is The Undermining of the Democratic Club (Spuyten Duyvil). He has work in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Caliban, Verse, Borderlands, Mudfish, Zoland, Harvard Review, New Orleans Review, Carbon Culture Review, etc. He also had the dubious honor of being included in Best American Poetry 2009, possibly the worst volume in the entire series. If only he could be selected for inclusion in Best New Autoimmune Diseases, he would be over the moon.

ISSUE EIGHT: Melty Slayers | next poem →