Noah Stetzer

The Wall Instructs

it’s been months
since the sun came
through the blinds
the way it's here now
the wall striped and lit
with a slanting and slow
moving squared shape
of warm late afternoon
light and the way
the window’s now
a stencil a cookie
cutter the wall’s a comb
of slat shadows
that are creeping a slow
burn candle wick
into the corner as day
folds into itself
leaving the room
this little dark
that makes me think
it’s even colder now
draft behind my neck
a chill under foot
you could stand
to leave a place
that loses such magic
in ticking seconds
a place that shows
you just exactly
how to go

________________________________________________________________________________________

Noah Stetzer is the author of Because I Can See Needing a Knife (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). His Pushcart-nominated poems have appeared in the New England Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose & Poetry, Green Mountains Review, Bellevue Literary Review and other journals. He has been a fellow of the Lambda Literary Retreat and a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Noah lives in Kansas City and can be found online at www.noahstetzer.com.