Albert Flynn DeSilver's poems have appeared, or are soon to be published, in New American Writing, Hanging Loose,
Rhizome, Fourteen Hills, Skanky Possum, The Hat and Tinfish. He is editor of The Owl Press.





Letter Three

none begin, “Dear Whosie. . .” Or filter you off into two
point perspective ironed to the horizon - a road
to meander alone - down a wet road steaming after the season's
first rain leaves pulverized gorgeously to the pavement their prints
I will mimic - we are we led on to Early Street where
the yellow double line down the middle is a noodle
that strangles direction is a fat shoe lace high wire untied
for clumsy ones with two feet and just when you've regained your horror
the asphalt dissolves and suddenly you are drenched in the sentence
we once reflected in those tiny post rain pools,
gentle dishes set in the middle of your anticipation, the vertigo
is tremendous and lovely is worn as a dress is your only display
besides the words pulsing by between sweaty toes on
the wire, the ripple, the yellow little clusters of energy passing
through the center of your direction- words throb. Now
there is a crowd of beggars with small nets in the whites of their eyes
their looking claims to catch your fall their voices scratch
the bottoms of your feet- the obvious next inclination is to
fall, the next inclination has fallen, reads, “Sincerely Albert” landing

words like little neon buoys landing in the blood words
bob in the body say, “The waking state is a hoax”







Letter Five

here is a monument of wandering
where it will take you no tooth can tell
in your thought constructed boat
up that flooded avenue
sponging flow to more gracefully vocalize your flesh -
the architecture of your articulations line the street
like babbling lampposts floating by
in which case you come to witness some artificial renderings
of being be
not alarmed for you are only a breath away
from the integrated whole- hold out not
no matter how svelte the thought, for example;
“if death blots black out, must then blink light in”
Where the form of a white gust arrives
as a relief effort sewn
in a honeycomb cloud pattern the sky
weaves forth from what?
Being is then shed from these masses of air
and curls up in a crystalline ball
for all to rejoice around and speak at as if
you were addressing some mystical oracle
that turns out to be the sunburned back
of your neighbor's head
shining brightly through the hedges







Letter Thirteen

Dear you,
Now is your time to fondle the lightning
and braid it into your own ecstatic confections
like the sturdy nutrients of solitude
quietly imbibing -
since incomprehension is after all being
alone
alone who is alone who is Al/One?

Why do you not think of you as the coming one
is it for being caught missing our turbid communion?
We people err so often in the air
and then land in the tentacles of some less loud.
Life has become intolerable without your olives,
my heart has unswervingly atrophied here, hence
the love of all my intimacies must be let go







Letter Forty Eight

Dear Poem,
When are you gonna shape up
and become thrillingly brilliant to the general
reader- contemplative to the temporary ear?
Begin by addressing general reader with respect via
astute vacuity. Early Street, each sheet is a blank
star, is a blank stare is cancelling nothingness
a nest stretched from the center, L'etoille -
“we are our road”

I'm in Paris at the Arc de Triomphe, no I'm in New York
at the stifled fringes of desire.

“To write is to seek a permanent confrontation with death”
Yikes! I'd rather have an iced tea and walk up Lexington Avenue
in the middle of the day, & enjoy the women being consumed
in their own humidity; “Hey, there's wildman on unicorn”
they shriek, out the window of the Frick.
I love how I evaporate in the midst of their faces
as they cascade into me, and how I cease to exist
in the light of their beaming, weather brutally or beautifully -
I am there, I become their stunning dissolve.