In a room doubling as a hallway 
For Laura

I whisper to you a pillow away
that the President is being taken care

of, and then our unscripted dreams
struggling, black hungry

failures of hope, unbuttoned episodes
with the architecture of blindfolded men

where the wind is a wingless insect muscling a serenade
through a nearby neighborhood; where the afternoons

spend themselves twice over and Love comes to a noisy boil;
where children hold hands through changing seasons

and across borders before collapsing in one massive
international seizure; where our old lovers marry,

breast-feed, and mow crooked lines behind white picket fences;
where your father rocks back and forth upon a Floridian wave,

the sun sleeping on his forehead; where both of us vote
in full makeup, the crowd vanishing in mid-ovation.  

Noah Falck’s work has appeared or will appear in such journals as The Columbia Poetry Review, POOL, Gulf Coast, and LIT.  He is the author of three chapbooks: Measuring Tape for the Midwest (Pavement Saw, June 2008), Homemade Engines from a Dream (Pudding House, 2007), and a third, yet to be published chapbook, Life As A Crossword Puzzle, which was recently selected as a finalist in the BOOM Chapbook contest with Bateau Press.