Blue Tick
© Beth Roberts
Having opened to your face closed up in sun
glasses once, I raze the news daily for more of you.

These days it's pornography mainly, moth vs.
the light, the question being who lied

and who lies still. I've learned from headlines giving
head and the heads of state we'd better be either

bug or divine to survive with a semblance of being seen.
I must have failed you, hence the glasses and fabric

ated name of a girl running along
the edge. I would think such a thing, lying

as it occurs, I make my day a cursed
Sunday, no church, no meal, I get you

from the news, the same sky mud-slinging
among us, gibbous, dog stars, all laughing

at us at once and the same place. Hence you're
on the east or west coast, and nowhere

between, face blue from the twitching
screen, thinking mostly--I see it

like a sunspot--of a world emptied out of a box
by sex, debriefed population all alone with their parts

and wondering. And now the moon,
with whom we share a responsibility.

And now the silence, the ticks in the walls and tick-
tock toward the light. So you see how I long

for you, prurient in the ribs of the hired hound,
slight sycophant fattening on absence.