ANDREW NANCE

 

XVI

from Endemic Gospels

 
Leave thee inside office, post me 
speeding up, ineluctable conformity 
lying, shipwrecked, the boy dreams 
in taps, an alleluia-type cry to keep 
from falling into wake, her slip’s 
linen slunk down stairs from high’s 
panicked silence: closing down 
the separation asks to leave, asks: tu 
fini? gin-picked by salt & for safe 
keeping, sweet-meats, lips prettier 
at threshold, still lit from below the 
painting on stage, hundreds clung 
to feet & et tu slapdash, piece of ass: 
consider it: him amid me, its limbs. 
 

XVII

(The Incident of the Galls)

from Endemic Gospels

 
I am altogether self-same, pithy 
declination keys-in my affection: 
here is thy choice & I am hereby 
laid to face it: I have foraged, I have 
tried to curb a Hibernian urge 
to fight skepticism by drawing air 
into body, to let it go on to another 
without scantiest scent of affectation 
remaining: I owned a stone 
without much love, gave it a maiden 
claim to all of my chaste comedy 
yet even then I knew better: five 
foot five & tailored to stasis, dying 
made a chore of churning blood 
through affection, winded breaks 
of march, it began poorly seen & 
ended hungry: piano tuners waking 
out-of-key to debt, hollowing 
a bodice of others’ air, I met them 
years later, & spelled it again. 
 

XIX

from Endemic Gospels

 
He wonders: I turn off? wearing 
stockings & high heels or crampons 
depending, late-night all twenty 
hours long am I powered up to an 
Atlantic’s cup, continental warp 
& waft, how many watts will young 
bones yield under tremendous 
pressure? building a table on river- 
bed, a bucket of food to keep 
from death, wives a life long kept 
away, he misses them, tundra to east 
westing his name, rising, he beds. 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Nance is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He will be a visiting lecturer at the IIML in the summer of 2013. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Petri Press, The Quarterly Conversation, and Narrative Magazine.

 

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