One

Audrey Gorton

But I am

lonely for the whole loath

some world, as if it were one

person whose name I almost know,

a man who lost his first tooth

the same day

I did. We once spoke forth

a flood, all at once, after

wards aching everything. Dismal,

I laughed, how dismal we are.

Suddenly,

his brow wept senescence

in blood sweats, and ashes fell

from his eyes like a veil, or some

thing along the lines of veils,

his rot tongue

retraced the hole where a

mouth was, and he spoke: It is not 

as if I want to know what

becomes of us in death.