Much less solid opera houses

hand to hand coins and keys

coins and keys lingering missing

chest-high fields of all the footprints missing

 

opera houses this way missing Mathias coins and keys missing

the world is much less solid lingering on

 

blue stretching hand to hand body through the night

distant windy of all the footprints the world is not

body through the night hand to hand much less solid he thought it was body through night

he thought it was body through night Mathias knocks but the world is out.
 
 

 

 

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JOHN CROSS teaches seventh-grade English at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena, where his students, while studying Dada, joyously disrupt the campus. He lives in California with artist Christine Kiphart and Gordon the dog. His chapbook staring at the animal, winner of the Snowbound Chapbook Award, was published by Tupelo Press, and his book What Bleak Angels Carried Your Bed, winner of the Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Prize, is forthcoming in fall 2026, from Omnidawn Press.

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is “rosmunda’s” by GRETA KOSHENINA.