Paul Klinger
Hence
Honor stems from these flowers
just out the window
or the inexpensive stone
children with their hands
on one another.
It’s the column of bricks
I catch napping in the corner
or the typewriter to my left.
It’s the set of mailboxes
that smell
faintly chipped;
a footpath, firmly
dedicated to its clients;
the glass display
which used to hold the quail
and the sage and the little scene
they made together.
It was that set of colors
on the floor,
closer to me now
than they were then.
As with everything.
Paul Klinger works as a member of the POG collective (gopog.org) in Tucson, Arizona. His work can be read online at Dusie and hutt. He has recently completed an erasure of P.J. Bailey’s epic poem ‘Festus’, which he dedicates as a valentine to Robert Duncan. Of ‘Hence’ Klinger writes: “‘Hence’ was conceived while I was working the phones at my dad’s law office. It is indebted to Tenney Nathanson, Ashbery’s ‘The Double Dream of Spring’ and the work of minor taxidermists in Baytown, Texas and surrounding areas.”