The Nightly Statue Carving

Rumpled and mousy portrait,
what do you sing for me?
Is it rain? No, never water

lollygagging the pond beneath the moon,
too cruel for the sparking
air at balsam dusk, hushed in gold.

Buzzing hair clippers like cicada melody
fold over this body like an ivory comb
shouting vetiver and mahogany. Is it the sea

sickness? Blushing like sprouting gardenia,
repulsed at its whiteness. Another day of bargaining
my mindfulness towards craft and little

dying. Oh, is this all that I’m doing?
Lost within my little rooms,
wandering through a wreckage sonnet.

Another trial, another run begins
another fruit sliding down my chin. Hands
meander and wander, waning at the touch

of clean skin, new skin emerging
from beneath the blister. This episode
in indulgence is unkind and far

from modest, but the only stutter
of the endless day. I’m writing my
own future, an edict in poem.

The garden trees hear me, they flush
in rapture and point forwards in the wind,
mottling this portrait of pining.

Samuel Wood (he/him) is currently completing his final year of undergraduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying English Literature and Spanish. He is the current poetry editor for the campus literary journal, The Madison Review, as well as the editor-in-chief for the university's undergraduate humanities and fine arts magazine, Illumination Journal.