Today's poem is by Derek Mong

To Assemble This Poem Properly
       

        begin from above. The first line wrote itself
in eraser. Your entrance refills with its cloud.

Can you feel now a dull tug on your pant leg?
You have shadows within shadows.

The poem strips them off like spare parachutes.
Watch their dark mouths briefly glisten

like guardrail reflectors. Leave silence
between them like warm loaves of bread.

Whatever small truth the poem hurtles toward
is already in your pockets. Release it here

and stop breathing. Watch it rain down
like disco ball light. If a story comes in, cold

from the margins, you alone can warm
its feet. To do so you must hold it

beneath the voice that trails you.
You offer the one it becomes on the ground.

The seamless transfer of two people
humming is one scenario in which the poem

successfully ends. In another these couplets empty
and you are a diver climbing their cool tubes

back up to the start. From there you see its finale
clearly, but do nothing to alter its course.

You'll soon crash through a tenth story window.
Do not worry. The poem's safe.

See its thousand shards glint at your feet.

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Copyright © 2023 Derek Mong All rights reserved
from Lords of Misrule editors: Rebecca Lauren & Henry Israeli
Saturnalia Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission