colophon // will cordeiro

I perch in a swayback chair
out on my porch, beaming
at the smear of stars above.
They burn a void into my eyes.
A crookedness not in the air
but in the very grain of me,
anxiety I churn like butter.
Little riots back the brain.
I don’t know one damn thing.
Aimlessly I seek to understand
these words I’m rearranging, 
an offering to otherness. No
end of secrets in the dark
woods. Match flare, lightning
bug—little spitfire suffering
its fug, its fleeting lit-up flicker   
of consciousness. Brash spark.
A chorus of obscurer moods  
descends. Soon, April blossoms
in its shapeless fecundation.
Things capable of quickening
thickening the plot until it veers
off course. I’ll take whatever
I scavenge from the bargain bins.
Each tidbit in this backlot of
mockups destined to be chewed
over and tossed aside. Existence
toggles, squirms, as more profuse
than the boxes we’d stuff it in.
Order’s the borders you make up,
putting labels on the rot and guff,
abducing theorems from each shard.
The world beyond this one’s not
a myth. It’s right beside—inside
you, if only you were able to see
its sharp eviscerating splendor bare,
or feel its texture wreck you, hard.
One fair sunset might just end you.
Only assorted fables will endure.
You live today, another day, a day
tipped over, then the produce
hits the cutting board.

---

Will Cordeiro has work published in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and The Threepenny Review. Will is the author of Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024), as well as coauthor of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024) and, forthcoming, The New Foundations of Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2027). Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.