W. Scott Howard

Author photograph by Gwendolyn Howard

 

RIDING SEAWARD

 

You’ll find my circumlocutions encrypted within these nested circuits

Of alleyways apartment blocks boulevards and viaducts—evading transport.

These things happen—besides we’re stuck for the moment on this overpass

Parsing redactions from our bootleg mixtape tour—so magnificently garbled

By the analog maw—thanks to your impressive array of improvised editing tools

Notwithstanding my stitched erasures. Our fitful conversation folds through fabrics

Like a double helical murmuration. Or is that a kit of speckled darker birches swinging

In the mirror? The mark of uncertainty draws attention to a point just as one gesture

From you is more than enough until a fan unfurls below fountain stippled canopies

Of Jacaranda sway. If a domino falls into a friend’s quick hand under the table

What’s the special providence in that? Another random ask in the midst of things.

I mean it’s not like we’re perpetual college friends worrying over the plummet

Of a sparrow or scanning liminal least sounds lofting lines homeward—escaping

Into peripheries of light the way a wing scapes which is to say how feathers

Feather. So now you know why I have a habit of collecting broken lines of code

For necklaces or passwords from handwritten recipes like darts dozing

In a traveling case. Maybe others see us from the passing lane enjoying this

Course of particulars without autocorrect saying we can’t wake through things

For ourselves. I’ve heard such drowned complaints from roughhewn chambers

Muttering back seat matters. That’s your best strand for any final dusk walks.

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W. SCOTT HOWARD lives in Englewood, CO, where he gardens and writes. Scott’s poems may be found in Diagram, E.Ratio, Talisman, Visible Binary, and word for / word (among other journals). His collections of poetry include the e-book, ROPES (with images by Ginger Knowlton) from Delete Press, 2014; and SPINNAKERS (The Lune, 2016). He teaches poetics and poetry in the Department of English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver.

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Read more by W. Scott Howard:

 
Poem in B O D Y
Poem in Diagram
Poem in E.Ratio
6 Poems in word for / word
More information @ DU Portfolio and ink node