Memoir of a Muted Posthorn
by Adrian Dallas Frandle
In another life I got a wrist tattoo taken from The Crying
of Lot 49. A muted trumpet over radial artery announces
nothing. The symbol is inert, meant to represent the search
for lost symbols. My marginalia can confirm this
search is ongoing. I say another life because that dead ink
only haunts me now. Static as that trumpet and quiet
as my comebacks in a fight. I never fought for myself
honestly, so the sin can only be mine. O’ trespass of meek
rainfall, that will shower forth apocalyptic from all
that dammed up water behind my muted posthorn. Symbols
are meant to be shared. Somehow he found a way to steal
what had freely flowed. Now his back wings under
the weight of memory needled into skin, an image
of a bird lifting off water, or an island arrested between sea
and sky, but exploded so the span shadows scapulae. Scan
the open ocean’s text, but I am rendered unreadable.
Find me an aster blossom as trumpet, an orange floral
instrument just shy of bursting. I want my hands to speak
up to boom blooming. To be unrecognizable, a loud flower.
Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes poems to the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Press & a Poetry MFA candidate at Randolph College. “Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth” out now with Kith Books. Find work online at adriandallas.com