The End of Television

by Sara Nicholson

Covet not the sun its honorarium
nor authorize the stars their grants to write.

The sojournors spotted a forest
adrift with language, but couldn't make sense of it.

The woods at odds with the usual channels
and those neighboring mountains

didn't look like pyramids, no matter the scale.
Read this part as if the sum of lilac

mattered to you. For love of someone
else's vortex, toss the luminaries aside.

In lieu of flowers, please donate
and in exchange for your sympathy I'll give you

edits on the level of the line. Poems are to war
as are ghosts to the proverbial orchard.

Headstones offer us nothing
but an end to syntax. Microsoft

Word inverts the sea. I read
your manuscript. Reader, I married it.

I fear for the estuarics.
They are so small this time of year.

Sara Nicholson, "The End of Television" from The Living Method. Copyright © 2014 by Sara Nicholson.