by Cameron Morse

Why is it always in
the rain that I am
trying to appease you
I am steering into
the sperm squiggles
of I-70 fogging
the single bleary lens
dashing through
puddled parking lots
for a box of blue
berry muffins or a list
of interrogatives for
the elusive       aloof?
flooring department guy
some kind of hermit
who never answers the phone

            *

Omi squalls tornado
siren backing my poetry
reading on Zoom

I’m hurling words
against the wind
amping up in an attempt
to outperform her

          *

At Eternity’s Gate

Willem Dafoe
as gutshot Van Gogh

Such a nightmare
I don’t know
how to keep going
who kicked me
in the stomach who
listened to me
groan in my rented
room on Wikipedia

Who killed Van Gogh

* * *

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review, a poetry editor at Harbor Editions, and the author of six collections of poetry. His first, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds and MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and two children. For more information, check out his website.    

* * *

At Eternity’s Gate is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he made in 1890 in Saint-Rémy de Provence based on an early lithograph. The painting was completed in early May at a time when he was convalescing from a severe relapse in his health and some two months before his death, generally accepted as a suicide. (source: vangogh.org)