Torchlight
(after Talglicht by Paul Celan)

Crisping from the viewfinder
my past voice cuts in.
Overturning heavens mix-up flossy airspace,
the tripod ferments to a swingle tree.

Estranged September unfolds your hair.
Blue-black, amber twists together
developing a noosed bouquet.
You shriek of duncish childhood
as the shrunken-eyed chaperon
scratches barbed wire lips
across our stiff faces.

                                          Time happens —
an ash-blond boy pipes up,
a hiss like runaway gas.


-Christopher Barnes

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