Aaron Fagan

Glimpse

On my knees
For the hour
Before dawn

I wait and rise
Take the rope
And breathe

A moment
The warm air
In my lungs

Onto the backs
Of my hands
Holding ready

To pull the bell
Back and forth
A dozen times

Before I put
The rope back
And kneel again.
​

---

Elk

Please teach me
To survive
The canned hunt.

I pitch refuge
In the leavings.
A torrent breaks

Across the surface
Of perceptions
Bodying forth

Exactly the perfect
Surface. Don’t be
Quick to get to the

Bottom. Where
Does this come from?
It’s about seeing,

And it’s about time.
Our time is a rendition, A palimpsest of the old’s

Design for the new,
That moment the word
Compulsion dignifies.

Irascibility may be
The answer to this
Final call. Anagoge

Wheels out its snake oil
Roadshow again,
Full of apologies, this time,

But not for long.
What The elk knows, it knows
And practices in silence. 

 


--
Aaron Fagan was born in Rochester, New York, in 1973 and was educated at Hampshire College and Syracuse University. He has lived in Chicago and New York City, serving as an Assistant Editor for Poetry Magazine and as a Copy & Research Editor for Scientific American respectively. He is the author of two poetry collections Garage (Salt Publishing, Cambridge, 2007) and Echo Train (Salt Publishing, London, 2010) and he has recited his work for the Harold Clurman Poetry Reading Series at The Stella Adler Studio of Acting. Poems of his have appeared in a variety of journals including 5AM, The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Brooklyn Review, Dossier, Link, Maggy, Poetry Daily, Shenandoah, Stand, Tuesday: An Art Project, TriQuarterly, and The Yale Review. He lives in Victor, New York.