I wanted to be held privately
like a company might, sleepless nights
spent wondering if I would stay this way
for the rest of my fleeting life;
what’s the use in lying—I couldn’t see a future,
just the years spinning
like blood in a centrifuge;
fugue state, save for the few
brief encounters I could imagine,
or conjure with a camera,
green light flashing; on the other side,
a stranger and his strange desires.
–
William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. His recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, RHINO Poetry, and other journals. He is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and the co-editor-in-chief of Frozen Sea.