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Lost Syntax
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Worse yet
The sentence that goes nowhere
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Like a beached jelly fish
Flotsam without sting
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The ideogram surrenders
As the tide recedes
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Branched off helter-skelter
Lost clauses scatter
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Dangling participles emerge
What of?
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Like an open parenthesis
You may become omitted in errata
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We scan the crowded page
Hunt for a semaphore
.
We read the cards
Argue over whether it’s a that or a which
.
Like a clean clear sentence
You inhabit my shadow
.
You fill my neat paragraph
With exact proportions of joy and sorrow
.
Our prose glides on a fluttering breeze
.
Homage to Magritte
.
Words flap on clotheslines
Pinned tight, they crackle
Float backwards
Inject down the maw
.
Ready for a reset
What is the ask
We babble
Become traders
Language just a barter
Our tongues caw
.
Here comes civilization
Wheels on clam shells
Spandex on steroids
Bowler hats that billow in the breeze
Boutique victuals, ravenous
We eat art
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P.E. Sloan is a writer who lives in Northern Virginia and Brooklyn with his wife, Donna Cameron. Originally from Chicago, P.E. attended college on the East Coast and then worked as a reporter and photographer and, occasionally, clueless deckhand in New England and the Florida Keys before getting some additional schooling and settling in for the pleasures of the long haul. His poems have appeared in North of Oxford, Third Wednesday, Poetica, Cathexis Northwest Press and District Lines.
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North of Oxford 