Repetition leaves me awe-struck
like prophets beholding old
testament angels: a hundred wings,
a thousand eyes. Iteration.
Spectrum disordered,
and, no, I’m not sorry.
Isn’t recreating yesterday beautiful?
The same AM alarm,
same aglio e olio, almond cappuccinos,
our blanket tug-o-war. There you are again.
This wasn’t supposed to be a love poem.
My misfired neurons displayed
like an unapologetic cadaver…
that’s the poem I want to write.
But always, you’re in my whispers,
my fixated repetition.
There’s no grail, no elusive perfection–
iteration–with you.
Brendan Stephens is a writer and assistant professor at West Texas A&M University. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pinch, Epoch, the Southeast Review, The Hopkins Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His awards include multiple Inprint Donald Barthelme awards, an Into the Void Fiction Prize, a Sequestrum Emerging Writer Award, and inclusion in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions. Currently, he is the creative nonfiction editor for Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.
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