we stood outside, beneath an oil white residence
                             as it began to rain.
we could hear the echoes of boys playing
                             in the almond eyed shade
like a tracing of tempo, back and forth,
                             willingly spoken to dry eyes.
this killing is an open gate,
                             it is but a riddle,
is but a book about hope
                             in memory’s negative.
we might have talked but we found
                             it unattended, a personless
city made only of wood and words
                             and stone, and there’s
an ash in the air at night now, among the rows
                             and rows of almond trees.
I kept thinking, as I listened to the careful
                             clicking of your tongue
on your teeth, that your hair is not brown,
                             so much as it might be
a purified bursting, a system crashing,
                             a forging of the purely spacial
into a structure so much like a world.

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Published 2nd September, 2024.

Samuel Gilpin is a poet living in Portland, OR, who holds a Ph.D. in English Lit. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which explains why he works as a door to door salesman. A Prism Review Poetry Contest winner, he has served as the Poetry Editor of Witness Magazine and Book Review Editor of Interim. A Cleveland State University First Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, most recently in The Bombay Gin, Omniverse, and Colorado Review. His chapbook Self-Portraits as a Reddening Sky will be out soon from Cathexis Press.