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    Procedures exhausted
    before hands emulsify
    that last grief into effective
    managerial utterances.
    Constant monitoring,
    lines of electrodes
    extending into each
    lengthening present
    itching every universe
    with the newest ideation—
    if the final context is
    painless, then who will
    grow up and become
    a diagnostician? Sleep
    presents itself as a style
    of animation. The moment
    is only itself as it is
    being rearranged.
    A nurse, here for my
    vitals, brings another
    cup of water, unbidden.

    ~

    With what posture does
    time enter the migraine?
    The strobe is positioned
    inches above your closed
    eyes and no matter how
    well behaved you never
    deserve an open window.
    Hyperventilate yourself.
    What incident induced the
    safety pamphlet revision?
    Boredom reconfigures
    the medium of light in
    which you are never going
    to leave this motorized
    bed. If anything shimmers
    housekeeping ignores it.
    An overhead camera
    becomes the ornament
    of a disjunctive mood
    you resolved years ago,
    this present owed to that
    offsetting “or” you still
    cannot withstand. Sight
    runs backwards in one
    direction. Home has
    always been an unworked
    parameter of this room.

     

    Engram Wilkinson’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Figure 1, LIT, The Offing, and Anomalous. His chapbook, Postictal, is forthcoming from H_NGM_N. Born and raised in central Alabama, he lives in San Francisco where he studies law.

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