TWO POEMS by NICHOLAS BON
Poem for the Hills, Somewhere
Behind these hills I've heard that there are more hills.
I'd take you there, but the road always seems to be closed.
This feels slightly off, like a dream, so I'll make my home
in the logic of dreams. After all, the horizon depends on us,
not on the world, and the way forward never really feels
like progress. When we're lost, we can light a fire,
a point pushing through the plane enough to warp it all
to impossibility. We can always tell when we're lost.
We can always tell it's night by the way the sun forgets
us. Don't worry about me, though. I was awake before,
and that was enough.
//
Poem about Emptiness
There are owls everywhere
but I don't hear the sounds of owls
The sun sets after the war
Look around you
There's a couch with no one on it
There's a green screen behind the trees
where we'll later place the stars
Long ago I got the message
If you love something, prerecord it
so my boombox plays in my cathedral
Build a new engine by crying
in an empty room
To cry in an empty room
is to remain somewhere familiar
if not warm
My boombox plays in my cathedral
Here it's the end of the world
My cathedral with its perfectly tuned echo
and the apathy all around us
I'm trying to cut through it as best I can
Nicholas Bon lives in Georgia, where they edit Epigraph Magazine. They have a chapbook coming out soon from Ghost City Press and recent poems in Spy Kids Review, M E T A T R O N, and Dream Pop Journal. Find them online at nicholasbon.com or @1000000horses.