in parentheses

along the happenstance of thought

do thoughts drown while asleep
like a shark in place! the light doesn’t reach
them completely. they float

in a sunken current and send
no messages via satellite. they weigh
above the shoulder, between ears,

under glass screens that conserve no mass,
no matter how much is transferred.
they’ve stopped sinking,

but only to my distant eyes that
don’t reach the other “side” of a black hole.
an epicenter no eyes can reach

but you’re still escaping,
rippling,
bubbling,
awake!

awake in a trench
not helpless but below the law
of what hangs crookedly at the height of stone.

despite the lapping
at the edge that drags and deforms,
all is accepted with a kiddish skip

along rigid edges without any corners.
you build your map in this sand with no large cities
and it’s washed away…
so we stood there watching so much of ourselves disappear.

—

Phillipe M. Chatelain is a poet from the Bronx, New York. He is a recent graduate of Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts in English. His first chapbook entitled taking shots alone has been independently released and available for free here. He is Managing Editor of In Parentheses Literary Magazine.