THE LESSER SYSTEMS

       On this day when
the clocks follow the concentric
       tempo of a top

and the verb to be
       has worn off its costume
so the tongue can pick a place

       among pictures, touch
the unsung repose of shut
       it’s like the spring is one

powder keg of pretty
       and all the math that felt
unnatural adds up to up

       So stay with me
and stir paint for definitions
       give red to melancholy

for all I care
       for all I am is care lost
in a cornfield where it seeks

       accord, as love
is as much about a person
       as the atmosphere they create

around your coordinates
       the admissions parlor
the family tree where dinner is religion

       No one ever asks
about figments of reality
       but they’re there

confetti and metaphysics
       make a fine pair, as do
lemon and ocean, progress, nocturne

       plus other approximate
pronouns such as you and I
       and the only chronological

constants worth a dance
       the two-step we ones
call on and on

Andrew Seguin is a poet and photographer. He is the author of Black Anecdote, a chapbook that was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the Poetry Society of America’s New York Chapbook Fellowship. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines, including in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, horse less review, LIT and Map Literary, and he has contributed work to the New York Botanical Garden’s Literary Audio Tour. His most recent photographic work, The Whale in the Margin, a series of cyanotypes inspired by Moby-Dick, has appeared in galleries in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; New York City; and Lexington, Virginia.