O As A Hole Down the Page
by Micah Bateman
Can you understand that I is my cursor,
skinny space into which you cannot fit?
But O, my snare: shape of eye, shape of Other,
furtive meaning of behold. O this burrow, dreary
into and into again. Alimentary, my dear.
Am I still a mole of a man? Down the chute,
O a corset squeeze. Frenzied and at what pressure
your O of a belly shrinks to brevity's end.
The throat of it—penetration's opposite—Poor Oafelia:
swallowed into verse and made comestible.
From the Latin come-here. Inverse beckoning motion
of my fingers on the type—O this fear-
ful circuit they create. O, mortar of word to white,
nexus between ink and else: I say O water and poof!
flush. The cross section of that river—O—
much multiplied. O, the cross section of each poem's
pipe. In the glassy stream of this weeping
brook I write, let your garlands and your clothes
suck tight; let O equal zero, sum of your struggle.
Micah Bateman is from Jacksonville, Texas, and will be an entering poet in the Iowa Writers' Workshop this fall. His poetry has most recently appeared in the Pebble Lake Review and online at Sub-Lit.