Joe Hall

THE GREAT BEYOND, AGAIN

Who counts these hours? I know
even before a browser in the cold inlay of disgust
time pours into capsules. Cheryl,
you walked across the flooded path
in your green rubber boots.
We fell in behind a dad smoking
a joint, taking videos
of his rambling kids. Later you
turned to me and said,
“We’re going to die.”
The swan’s neck leafing
into a plant beside a window,
your celery, sardines, and lentils
depend on your hours being counted as pay,
walking the territory of sleep beside each other,
looking at the red eye blinking away
over the city, Buffalo, from any window.
Who counts the time that can’t be counted?

JOE HALL is based in Buffalo. His books of poetry include Fugue & Strike and Pigafetta Is My Wife. According to The Boston Globe, “Joe Hall’s poems move between a fist-pounding urgency, the fire and squelch of this moment of our endtime, and a vulnerability hushed and gentle as a nightgown on a laundry line.”