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​East Fork:

A Journal of the Arts​​


Everything has a composition now, the junk on the table, the way people walk. It reminds me of something I read in grade school from the perspective of a man knowingly walking to his death.

He noticed everything to,

like the glint of the sun on tree leaves
or the swagger of a single blade of grass;
the message in the motion of a motionless pool,
the motion in emotion of a life you can’t fill full.

He imagined himself falling as he walked, but I only imagine disappearing.

Would that G-d talk to me, tell me to have faith, aren’t we tired of that yet? I feel like He should know.

It’s like they think I’ve given up, do they even know that they are slaves to hope? This hope is crisis; crisis crushing. Have they even thought that faith is often less a hope in the unseen and more about an almost spiteful asurity in what you know to be true. I’ve never seen people like this before, made momentous by every desire save compassion. Passion of tragedy, lost in pursuit of superfluous fluency, given up all for the right to conformity, lost in a world of shock and awe and imperfect empathy. I’m bitter and hopeless I know, I know I come with baggage so I walk with the swagger of a single blade of grass and arrange my face like something sexy, something snide.

It’s confusing because I’m pretty,
yet bitter and hopeless
like violence.

If I could only tell you how desire has crushed us, if I could only act on this impulse to converse with you, but I’ve made myself inaccessible, detached and closed off to make this life observable.

There are people like me, that refuse to engage bitter faculties
and instead they smile at everyone.

Their ship’s sinking to and yet they sing songs

I’d be cussing the structural engineer.

They watched Titanic right?
None of the violinists survived.

The heart often sings to its own irregular beat.

Its doggish and placid, its uninviting and biting, and you can touch it and feel it, and when it jumps you are done. You wonder how did it fly, you wonder how did it flow, you wonder how did it love that and again then when will it go. Push it and feed it, it resonates and keeps beating, you can pray live and hope, but hope is not for this bleeding. One day it will stop, biting and red, you’ll see it flowing not flying, and that it’s whole yet untied.
I am only in sheep’s clothing,
bitter and in between,
living with these cuts on fire,
the heart is a wicked thing.

Cuts on Fire
By: Rick Crabtree