From The Wallace Variations a sort of poetry fan fiction that expands & explores the life & work of Stevens’, imaginatively, so as i might speak with him, ultimately.

Lullabies

Wallace phoned in the early hours of a sultry
August night that soaked the William Morris wall-paper

to make summer noises down the telephone
an imitation with his vocal cords of noises from the tropic months

: the intolerable mugginess of sweaty sandwich afternoons
the pores of dry skin squeezed by August’s humid stump

the silent treatment of the heat of things
the hissing of wet bricks & twigs, the wind in its own mouth

—i dozed off after shy an hour of his charade
& in my head the clinch of summer broke an egg.