Virginia Konchan

THE EQUIVOCAL WORLD

Bed as tribulation. Bed as poplar tree,
barrel of apples, garden created ex nihilo.
Honestly, it’s a miracle anything gets made,

let alone all and sundry: what I’m looking at,
now. Hand me my physic, my wire monkey
mother, my spittoon, my vice. Instead of

a musical note, a hole. Instead of a prelude,
desecration. I go to the things I love with no
thought of duty or pity: likewise, the glittery

object in the tall native grass. If I had enough
money to buy a consonant, I would buy a diphthong,
a dent, a derring-do. As it is, I am disloyal, mute.

The hysteric and the killjoy move as one.
The bridal party and the bride move as one.
I didn’t come here to pay homage to a metonym

for dick, yet I do want the quick and dirty version
of everything, from intelligence briefs to literature.
Why are the most exhausted people I meet described

as tireless by their peers? Why is truth thrice
removed from art? I don’t need a curse or vendetta.
I need a primate, versed in deceit, to gift me its heart.

VIRGINIA KONCHAN is the author of the poetry collection The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon) and the short story collection Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press), as well as three chapbooks, including the forthcoming Empire of Dirt (above/ground press). Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, and The New Yorker.