Good evening Secretary of the Interior Brain, glowing
wick of my infomercial light

Grant me the number of wishes you wished on yourself

Hold me like an in-law raving after Secret Santa for
everything that gets away

Kiss me when you’re done kissing yourself with your
dark gray lips, your coral teeth

I can’t get my skull around these midnight whimpers

I can’t help but play your games like an American fall
folds its own flag

This agony is the thought of its agony—a wave from
just outside the frame

Every alleyway I’ve ever entered is what an ex says
is next at the end

I see you see the President, I hear you scrawled onto
a blackboard

Waiting for you to come home is like a field soaked
in black paint

Someday, I want to tell you about my own field where
you point the camera

Where you wait for me to shout, “Action” and “Cut”

Andrew Nance is the founding editor of Company. His poems and reviews have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Better: Culture & Lit, Colorado Review, Linebreak, Narrative, The Winter Anthology, Petri Press, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently lives and teaches in Iowa City.

Feature image by Kaspar Kägi, Slow Dive, 2014. Courtesy the artist