a feeling has passed before a charted present

I wanted to write a book that was like lying down.
            —Bhanu Kapil

a feeling has passed before a charted present
a possibly expired desire
a replacement of Whitman’s body with his opposite
a polite vengeance

a presumed minor literature
a simile not in force
a yoking of the concrete
a myth makes

a body subject to forces not legislated to pass over a same
a memory uncertain about a sentence
a certain observation of an indefinite object
a response barely stands

a sentence only to signal an unwritten
a demand for a law barring its passage and end
a tapeworm, a pinworm, a hookworm, a threadworm
a fluke a sentence wants never to end

Copyright © 2021 by Kimberly Alidio. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 4, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.