J. Michael Wahlgren

NIGHT PROOF


Unplugs the night light for certain— sure that contrast is fond?
I won’t sleep, neither will she --
But the cicadas speak to us, in code, (minus the caffeine)
Bonding as a love seat would so,

No longer a sea part, us apart, love devours
the minute -- Nameless, she remains,
carries up her sweater, weave & string, dangling.
Hours are blue, (if they too possess hue),

I admit the ray -— a perennial bulb, returning
as a sun would to its stone. I mend
the sweater’s hole. The whole piece, emitting a sieve-like
woman, dancing in spotlight after spotlight. Certainly night proof:

No splice inside of this weave -- I propagate the meteor.
We so surround to cannonball through the dark, McKenna
Unplugs the night light for certain -— sure that contrast is fond?
I won’t sleep. Neither will she -—

J. Michael Wahlgren is the author of two chapbooks: Chariots of Flame (2007) & Pre-elixir (2008) both on Maverick Duck Press & the full-length poetry collection Silent Actor (BeWrite, 2008). He was influenced early on by the fiction of Hermann Hesse. He resides in Boston, MA where he edits Gold Wake Press.