Joseph Housley

Ultrasonic

Forever I could hear it all, watch hands
ticking rooms away, flies landing on the kitchen
wall. I raised my bed on rubber blocks, lay
wide awake and listened to the Buvač
family down the street succumb to smoke and
suffocating heat.
            Left Budapest for Paris, shook it off,
took Bromid of Potassium and sat
sun-stunned, heard thunder come,
heard carriages like dynamite that did
me in. 

Die stille Welt zu meinen Füßen

My heartbeat faster than a bat
Thirteen times better ears than anyone I’ve ever met

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Joseph Housley’s poems and other writings have appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New York Quarterly, Fulcrum and Sixth Finch, as well as other journals and anthologies. He was selected for a residency at the Hewnoaks Artist Colony and received an MFA in poetry from The New School. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.