On Saturnalia


I glow in a salted room
an old scream surrounded by wasps

Breezes tease the floor’s fruiting body

Dogs unbox shadows in the sea between them  

Tesseract panes sound a green organ hiss of folded earth

Soft depressions in compost mold thickening 

as the small hand’s tick drains my leaky leg
Soft gel glamour shots:
snapping cockle stanchioned in holly


The idea of a day is Hermaphroditic
Segmented worm
of gathering worms
enters and leaves me repeatedly

agape in intramural storming

All the doors on this street are the same shade
same hinge-bending load over all my coming 

Averaged night on the tiles swollen full

In puce of dawn, desire like some thick and dirty glasses
I undress myself for ghosts of drink to dull its bite



*

Adam Tedesco is a founding editor of REALITY BEACH, a journal of new poetics. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, Prelude, Conduit, Powderkeg, jubilat, Fence, and elsewhere. He is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Misrule (Ursus Americanus), as well as the collection Mary Oliver (Lithic Press, 2019). 

Photograph from performance by Leif Holmstrand.