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XIII.
Architecture is a body
glass chose.
Strong along
but weak across an axis,
thin shell bellying—
the natural states of danger
tempted.
Our windows give
how much we want,
we offer. Mine
the only shade drawn.
Glass slices,
fractures to gunpowder.
A firework’s drooping flower.
A spider splintered
above my door—her growing web.
Heat unscrews itself from pavement.
The silver blur of crossbows,
autobodies woven into plates.
Threads, no thinner hair, pultruded—
Down feathers—
Fleece, shorn sheep—
Glass wools to warm
its body. Phallic
and airfilled fibers collide.
Nerves diverge like roots, twin fires
to a gentle meld.
Waxen green palms
needing the unnatural.
What we see needs alterations.
In blown broad sheets,
the rain comes down
to the polished earth.
Will Russo is a Chicago-based poet from New York and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. His work has appeared in Annulet, Watershed Review, Salamander, and elsewhere. He is poetry editor at Great Lakes Review. Find him at willrusso.com.