________

 
architecture,
                  dear architecture,
 
 
 

I just woke up from a dream in which I’d been throwing forget-me-nots into helicopter
blades
 

this is what I’d wanted:
 
 
for “bluish” to arrive as “ish,” unglued as though a window. enroll in service of the word
earth, crack
 
 
like an x-ray through the sky’s sleepwalking a robin’s egg, its slick membrane
 
 
the sky is this: a slowly opening fold of: I don’t know what I know, soft
 
 
as a comma’s what I thrust myself into, unconscious splice of salty star-scatter
 
 
& is this making any sense, dear architecture?
 
 
—that we may misuse our glassy feelings
 
 
—that we may hollow what’s left to pour out moonlight’s broken bone
 
 
night’s eyeliner the whites of our eyes we roll in a cloud’s imbued
 
 
until aloud: dove. the of I’m folding into a wing of

 
 
 
________

 
architecture,
                  dear architecture,
 
 
 

a friend writes, “the home is for screaming or no emotion”
 
 
& I’ve been an envelope of that for years now. how a paper plane ignores engineering
 
 
& takes flight anyway
 
 
what am I supposed to do with that? what am I, supposed to that? what am I, supposed?
 
 
I feel a glad hangnail’s avalanche coming on, dear architecture, breathy licks
 
 
of blackbirds lace the grass
 
 
outside my window today in knots, how
 
 
as though a jewel, crystal
 
 
webs could stomach us yet still be in need of a good stylist. I could be facetious about a
skeleton, incur & still forgive
 
 
what theory or machine what alive-economy hyphenates you & I into one voice can’t
 
 
voice, dear architecture,
 
 
but that’s no skeleton to live by
 
 
& it’s getting hard to relinquish physics as a way of what divulges devastation
 
 
& how that hyphenates us human
 
 
because that’s what I like I like a tongue’s telephone wire
 
 
circling the built-unbuilt like a crescent moon’s visual isn’t
 
 
so invis-enviro of you
 
 
like the fluidity in cinnamons’ curling swells a tongue to task. as means to an end. of what’s so meaty, so celluloid of air
 
 
hug me from the inside like an iron lung, asphalt
 
 
it’s getting hard to say the word flower anymore. let alone yield

 
 
 
________
 
architecture,
                  dear architecture,
 
 
 
to begin, I’ve written two words side-by-side on yellow-lined notebook paper
 
 

: violet; violence

 

 
as a way of testing the bruises a colloseum’s pillars bury into a hillside, how the grass gathers
around it

 
 

(what anchors me in all this? —alarms of nausea. nausea the likes of which can only be
described as: nausea describes
 
 

for example: I wonder, how calmly your waters hold a swan’s gristle,
 
 

or how you occupy desire
 
 
—I occupy it by undertow. a lake’s elastic. the seasick eyes of a gull latched landward, far
from water)

 
 
I let sunset do the rest
 
 

dear architecture,
 
 

I have all the inclination of a dandelion’s static. of pulling apart. cotton-ball-esque-ly
 
 

horoscopes coalesce so much of your own projection
 
 

& yet those teeth, there’s a question there. of whether they’ll nurse milkthistle out of liasons
of meadows’ darkmeat

 
 
violet’s a traction of enamel over a lip. it purples a feeling of what the sun’s doing, sinking
down
 
 

totems into rosier folios. take it: these nauseous jaws, either as intro credits
 
 

or our animal film glued shut
 
 

violet; violence
 
 

the multifoliate bouquets. in spilled fuel. invisible suns tucked into rorschachs
 
 

“a violet’s blue as a sign of distance”

 
 
what’s ingrained
 
 

over what overbite is left
 
 

there are those who have long savored this distance as a choice view

 
 
—-
 
 
Jake Syersak is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Impressions in the Language of a Lantern’s Wick (Ghost Proposal). His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Typo, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Colorado Review.