Robert Hamilton
Pale sun and fifty-two degrees.
The people on the promenade
are beautiful. There is no god,
but we keep falling to our knees.
Now everything is brittle. We
spit out our lines, our lines fall dumb,
frozen in Herculaneum
without a scrap of agency.
Our Technicolor airs aside
we’re human casts of crumbling ash
produced by a capricious flash
to which we wheedle, pray, and cry:
but I—I’m done. I won’t affirm
in aching lines of pretty lies.
I am the spirit that denies.
I’ll squirm instead. And make you squirm.
Robert Hamilton lives and teaches English in Texas. His poem “Senso Unico,” which appears in Posit, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Other recent work is in perhappened, Anti-Heroin Chic, Neologism, Pøst-, and 8 Poems. His chapbook, Heart Trouble, was published by Ghost City in 2018. He is a poetry editor for Wrongdoing Magazine. He tweets at @ragandboneshop.