Restraint
This is my practice: holding
the little flowers at the angle
that makes them bloom.
There’s a light fragrance in the kitchen.
I smear a map, get lost.
Pots and pans. An empty page.
I swear to whatever is outside
the weird window I will defy
history, which is entropy with another face.
I will raise the blank mask to cover my listing
smile. I will erase every small joy
before making what I will make.
Mark McCloughan is a writer and artist in New York City. He is the author of No Harbor (L + S Press, 2014) and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Lines + Stars, decomP, and Sentinel Literary Quarterly.