wildscape. literary journal

Contronymy
by Elliott Schwebach

                                   fall, yield              to cave in
       to cave in first become a
                                          cave              become a cave

                       not to avoid the
            compound sun, but to             live in
                        light differently

            become skin, become
                                     lysergic              a knotted field
                            find me here              an earth

                           a cystic earth,             a
             body, in need of a cut
                                           here,             tempering still

Object Relations
by Elliott Schwebach

1) The Self

you’ll find an empty Children’s Motrin.
I’ll watch your face and act the infant.
at twelve months will you perceive intentionality?

at twelve years? twenty? who will face and act up 
to expectations? drive me through gunpowder 
towns (that I will later revisit)

instead. rhythmically, form a refrain, a 
longing. on the bus seat now in front of me: 
“almost.” can I both save face – and act?


2) This

what will I do with all
this yen, this hate, this sprawl of dry
silver draped across my
flesh, cathecting? might I become
a snowfall: pity from 
familial skies, a something new
to blanket life? (and you?)


3) Now

as sure as childhood’s 
oppositional (“is not”) 
I now broom loyal, 
bramble decades some hundred 
million misereres away

about the author // Elliott Schwebach