Donna Vorreyer

Unknown Conduits from Unknown Worlds

                        With a title from Herman Melville

The pilot light clicks and catches,
each pot with its own flashpoint and boil.
I lick the edges of knives to taste the copper.
 
Wires dangle, end-wrapped in plastic caps.
Beneath them, pure current flows to
nowhere. I imagine them uncovered,
me flinching, pinching those ends tight,
the fray and sizzle of skin.
 
All day, I flip switches that don’t ignite.
At night, I seek the coursing that comes
from touch, two live ends igniting.
 
All hail the circuitry of exposure, flesh
slipping blue sparks across cotton sheets
and then the surge, so mighty that it blows
the city into deep black and candlelight.
Smoke rises. I breathe in the burning.



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Donna Vorreyer resides in the Chicago area and is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish (Red Bird Chapbooks). Her second collection Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in late 2015.