Filament & Two Landscapes
By Nate Maxson
Filament
That split in time when you were young and rushing to turn out the lights in a room when you
left it, an attic or a garage, that kind of thing: noctophobia, fear of the dark, the first seam
popped and never sewn back
When you turn out the light, the room fills with your days
All the rooms with all the days, here they are
Lying on the floors like corpses looking up at the sky through holes in the ceiling, teeth coated
in glimmering lapis lazuli, a burial ritual they won’t understand when they find it, Yucca moths
having eaten away the shrouds
The rooms fill with days like water, until you can’t open most of the doors in the house
anymore, out of fear of the days flooding out
I tiptoe past the locked facades, cat burglar silent
What fills the world/ bulb/ pool/ room/ what fills the space when you look away
Two Landscapes
Horseland
Animal weight pressed against the membrane of extinction
Running, a dust trail DNA spiral,
Cracks in the hardpan after the rain dries
Two circles overlapped,
An eclipse
Or eyes opening
Squinting in the wind
A settled freeze
Water for the sand
Solidified like steam from the engine’s nose rising
Fogland
The hours leak like helium
Into blue
Our memories
The peripheral,
This creature of such delicate heft
Long legs stepping on leaves/bramble/glass
You’ll know it from the sound
Never seen among the trees
The world-hoof moving
In time to the dark
Landscapes and vanishing
Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.