The Point of Vanishing by Alec Hershman | Really System: Issue Fifteen

The Point of Vanishing

Alec Hershman

Lifting for their own, strands of fresh belonging,
the hands are grease-shadowed and very cold because
they have decapitated the copper transistor
for the promise of a few dollars.
No one promised. They are not my hands.
Shivering, said the hardened alcoholic,
is just a failure of the will. To station. To static.
The moon passed like a face passed out
from a TV set. It was not my face,
though my own fingers felt the mask.
Moon-dust rained, coarse as kitty litter,
then finer, as of chalk, or a little tax.
For a stranger, I think my body
might sound brazen and crinkly, like a paper bag
rubbed down to skirt around a bottle,
or loose change. But I'm not yet a thief,
I've never been. There's knife-wide silence
in my eyes. There's the opposite of winking
which is trying to fool a new man
into a false history of tenderness.
Even the ordinary sounds of taxis passing,
bored as sharks, make me quiet by comparison.

Alec Hershman lives in Ann Arbor where he teaches psychology. He has received awards from The KHN Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, Playa, The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design, and The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. You can find links to his work online at alechershmanpoetry.com.

ISSUE FIFTEEN: Lastly, My Seer | ← first poem