Sample Content

Elaine Sexton
Incandescence

And not just your wattage, your glow.
Soft white, warm, bright, daylight.
Some lose intensity. Dim, dense ideas,
frosted, long-standing. Some are chilly,
young, clear, or offer only an unwelcome
florescence, a blank stare striking a wall.
Some are insistent, unflattering, pressing,
undressing like a draft passing through
glass in a high-rise flat, wind whipping
the dark, so high up the sky surrounds us.
Solitary, you stand or hang under a shade.
Or, exposed. oh, bulb: don’t ever burn out.
You are the last of your kind, old,
inefficient, salvaged. Dangerous. I stroke
the dust from your skull by day, too hot
to touch now it’s too late to not spend the night.

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