Morning Puzzle
out—the bougainvillea untied in the grass late January sun browning everything my mustache skin memory I’ve collected the paper-mache
oranges from under the tree today and put them in the desk-drawer so that
tomorrow
I can put them back exactly where they had fallen
so I can see your face again clearly
Spring has constructed these connect-the-dots for us and I’m sure it will work soon to make me less lonely
things will be less conditional tomorrow!
let’s play cards tonight I’ve discovered a grammar of games
that will not be written down no matter how many times I ask
will not linger in the rationality of the sentence
and suddenly today I know you
as I have never known a photograph copy of you! or a gerund or the symbols for houses
I think I’m in love with the white surface of the sunlight imaginary
traced blue in the sky and the sidewalk
lined with all you know and love
you who hated driving and morning and winter hats made of plastic
but now you love me I’m sure of it
let’s play
sitting-on-the-couch-near-the-fire together
and pull the stars down for us
because I’ve run out of candles
and when I kiss you please remember you’re so beautiful like a weeping tree
looking upward
we may never see another color night
maybe never—
The Empirical
keeps phoning and phoning interrupts me writing my great epic take into account I have become a very young country
an America of sorts filled with gnats—
really worried about the fact that we only have six billion years ‘til the sun conks out so much to do!
All these absurd facts
laugh at my absurd longing and still
I deplore the hollowness of laughter.
there no there— my irony flares
peculiar pathos peculiar loss what a confrontation!
take into account that art makes the artist
or that there is some third thing so full of thingy-ness which we could call
Eros or sky or experimental methodology—
yet extinguishable all of it.
do I need a parking permit for this space wink
because I want something huge and handsome to happen between us
so it will disappear. I’d rather drink
on the way to the horizon while everyone slowly evaporates all around me
I am the Washington Monument let me get the door for you
at the bottom
I am something else not a thing at all
but it’s lovely to watch sensation cascade
down from the soft sky across all these well-behaved objects
love how it pools up inside me as I cease
and either way talking or not talking
I am dissolving
my love.
from a Cereal Box: Lullaby
I am manipulating the distance between you & I
dear reader dear love
and I think I’m certainly too close one step
and maybe this is becoming the reflection there look up!
in the mirror
But nothing has happened yet
I’m approaching the kingdom of dullness out is space
and it’s turning me upsidedown so that I can see your knees
how beautiful like seagulls
smile
and look away smile at least and please
please start your next sentence with dearest
or call me something to eat
I promise no one will read it promise to fold it with you inside
and put it in a book next to Yeats so no one will ever see it
and I’ll tell people instead about our trip to a foreign country how I wore a turban
the whole time and stood always with the sun behind me so you’d only see a
silhouette
And how unreal this is all words silhouettes
and no demonstration
so here is a salad oranges and rum
and here is a fork made out of wood and here is a willow that is also wood
at its heart to sit next to
here is the color of your embarrassment put it on
I’ve made it for you. 
Ethan Saul Bull graduated from The University of Arizona with an MFA in creative writing in 2008 and then moved to Mexico City. He also holds degrees from The University of Michigan and Indiana University. He has lived in various places in the Midwest, Arizona, and England, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. His first book of poems, titled Inside Narratives, was published by BlazeVOX Books in 2010. His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, EOAGH, Octopus, The Delinquent, Sub-lit, and others.
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