Today's poem is by Mark Ward

The Full Deck
        for D.A. Powell, after Sonnet 75 by William Shakespeare

So, are you? The expectance of being.
3 a.m. similarities, a lean-across bare graze.
We're an inflexion; masculine matter of fact.
A rigid flicker to my thoughts,

your cast-wide question is as food to me.
I can shapeshift a response, release
the need for certainty with a devouring of skin.
A potent memory burn, a meta-fantastic go-to life

and life in this moment splits into parallelograms
with possibly selfless, uninterested or leading answers.
Your flaw is that you're genuinely asking.
This naïveté as pretty to a predator as food.

My thoughts turn to responsible victory
and the physical prowess from verbal parlay.
I close my eyes in readiness for perfection
and feel a hand grope and hear So, you are.

Tweet

Copyright © 2023 Mark Ward All rights reserved
from "Carcass
Seven Kitchens Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission