Rex Ybañez
Sweater Weather
Ribbed cuffs & taper
ascending the slope–asymptotes
carrying the geometry of lunar eclipses
garnished with the opprobrious:
cyclonic conics accumulating
immaculate cumuli, the ritardando
lipping above a heavy mass of
Vulgate/ this is far worse than
Sanctuary, provided that
in lieu of anatomical finesse &
grandeur, hypnotism will either
turn [-gogic] or [-pompic]/
in the city where the rain never sleeps,
some may wish for the glass to
always cry, always weep. Deep
within, enunciating the curvature of
caricatures, drawing out what’s
enchanting, vertices tilt axes
horizontally, like the timeline into
declension/ drowning in a pool
of polyester proves better as
some dampener to muffle
droning flies hovering over
the fear of asymmetry. Things
like this sound very redundant, but
nothing calms volcano choir
more than sewing a sweater
fit for two, nothing suggestive of some
ménages à trois or wanting anything
to the point of unwantedness/
“wonted” is not a word of
our habitual vocabulary & like Dostoevsky,
speak this nonsense until this becomes
wedlock: between skin, between
intimacy, hidden inside something
vintage & familiar/ perhaps
this may be a secret, just to
appease, to tease, to plead guilty tonight:
habeas corpus–literally. A fifth of rum
may get the job done, but
tonight we don’t need to
slink away. Let the lampshade hush
out the lights. Wear nightshade as
darkness fills the volume of
this living room, the place to love
& roam, during the time for
couch lounging/ music to hear,
yes, but too quizzical to enuciate what’s
quotidian, it’s best left forgotten, at least
for now. The apocrypha lurking
between two, the mesh of hair
tangled in labyrinthine esotericism,
underneath where a garden flourishes,
we may meet/ & I’d like to think
this is what we want for Christmas.
Rex Ybañez is a former librarian and grant writer who is now a copy editor for Accelerate Learning, Inc. He graduated from Southwest Baptist Univeristy with degrees in English and Spanish. Other magazines who have accepted and published his mental stenography/literary alchemy are POTLUCK Mag, Haverthorn, DANSE MACABRE, ARDOR Literary Magazine, Young Adult Review Network (YARN), and UutPoetry among many others. Currently, he has a chapbook coming out by Condensed Matter Press called Pseudorealisme and is working on his debut poetry collection in the works called Imaginarium.