They Will Sew the Blue Sail

CONCEPTUAL POEM | Graham Foust

I love a map for its inaccuracies,

a certain pearl for its certain pearl-ness.

I wouldn’t hurt a fly, but I’d kill one,

a way of life that keeps me asleep nights,

as if adrift in a niche of big oil.

Symmetry is more or less more

and less bunk—another hole, another

doily; the phrase “Be that as it may”;

the fucking Milky Way by any other name . . .

A touch horrific is the green with which

the ground will tear the winter. I write this

as a florist muscles daisies into place.