Your Infinity Suit
by William Doreski
Wearing your infinity suit,
you’re invisible to everyone
but me. The shimmer of its surface
clings to you like plastic wrap,
while absence of color conceals you
and doesn’t even cast a shadow.
Dressed in this impossible distance,
you prowl the streets and observe
lovemaking in the gutters,
homeless people kneeling in prayer,
thick men dying in the doorways
of houses abandoned decades ago.
You enter rich apartment blocks
and slip into upholstered rooms
and fondle delicate knickknacks
and flip through famous first editions
and sample elaborate dinners
and sip wines you could never afford.
You listen to couples debate
sending their children to prep schools
or investing in blue-chip stocks,
then yawn so loudly with boredom
they startle and look all around
at the apparently empty air.
I can see you while others can’t,
but that’s because I carry
a mental photograph of you naked
not as people commonly are,
but as raw marble looks naked
to the eye of the expert sculptor.
Yes, the gleam of the suit itself
lingers for a moment not
where you are but where you were
a moment ago. I follow you
down the avenue, the crowd
parting in the shock of your breath.
Maybe if I ask politely
with that humble look on my face
you’ll let me try on that suit
on some warm dull afternoon when
infinity seems a reckoning
worth a little bodily risk.
Bio: William's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently Train to Providence, a collaboration with photographer Rodger Kingston.
The First New Work in a While
by Ben Nardolilli
Three poems, this editor
Wants three poems, my poems,
And of course
I gladly accept the terms:
No pay and a little exposure
It’s not print, they’ll be online,
In a sense ephemeral,
But also easier to find,
Potentially billions of eyes
And hearts might open up to them
The site has won no awards
And it has not published
Anyone who has won them,
It is not ranked
By whatever powers rank journals
So what? What awards
Have I won and what rank am I?
Private poet, first class, maybe,
Still, I got accepted
Without an ounce of networking
It makes the editor’s response
A true victory,
We are strangers to one another,
The work won her over
Because nothing else of mine can
Anyway, it is an acceptance,
Three poems, my poems,
Soon to be bundled with my name
Set before the world
To jeer, leer, and pass by
Bio: Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, The Northampton Review, Local Train Magazine, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is trying to publish a novel.
