Abeyance

Samuel Gilpin

glossed stratus rusted through structure of distance, the allure of space receded, shaded as yet another note from outside: on the bus back home, the daughter’s face in window’s glare, the new pinprick in her earlobe, the fresh conflict to her drive toward the uniform and dawning inclusion, parted only by memory’s parting: this early cigarette and its taste, this razor blade and its face —forever orienting outward memory’s orbit, its mild whisper, its amber blackening backgrounding every scene slipped placidly, shallow day patterning closure, brief wing of light flushed over faded river bank, felted water momentarily muted: how memoir, how prospective limits the tangible, groundlessly as any point of origin worked in iris clotting textured, memory mothering legibility as anything actual, discernible in some drive to remembering: the door, the drink, the vast line of red traffic lights thrown to some grammar their own outside the air is guttural, partly rain, part addition of distance outwardly moving, this peculiar domain of vision, plainly muffled in the oddly clouding, smoke between eye and lid masking sight, the dark contours becoming something not quite shut, a glimpsing en route to dissolution: discernible stain on black formica counter top, cat on windowsill, in the mirror, the mirrored portrait collapsing breadth between another, boundlessly seeding in hue of mistake, recognition pronouncing some oddity, some undoing, the kitchen light fracturing along tissue, dissipating, knotted queerly through window’s glare, only a blank moon and nothing else



Samuel Gilpin

Samuel Gilpin is a poet living in Portland, OR, who holds a Ph.D. in English Lit. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hence, its why he works as a door to door salesman. A Prism Review Poetry Contest winner, he has served as the Poetry Editor of Witness Magazine and Book Review Editor of Interim. A Cleveland State University First Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, most recently in The Bombay Gin, Omniverse, and Colorado Review. Follow him on IG @sam_gilpin_

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