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Self as Context

Today I had the thought that I had
Keys and a car, and a tiny bit of money
Since we haven’t split the mortgage yet
And I’m behind on paying my bills

Which means I could just go
A birthday party balloon no longer tethered
To the fence flying toward a reachless
Sky, devoid of a purposeful weight
A constant childhood fantasy of elsewhere

The self as context but always in context
So where I once served as a signal to the special
To a moment, to a milestone, to some cake
Now I could invite an apathetic sky to claim me
The sea to make me a horror to marine life

That is to say when the movement of the day ceases
And you couch lay on your side, roll your ankle to signal
Your foot hurts, to please rub it
My hands mean something different than the baseline nothing
Which doesn’t make my hands less, they just have a neutral attribution

And sure there could be a universe where I’m deflated and held lovingly
In arms that find the sad novelty of my lostness
Its own art, or a tire on a nascar, a condom on
a health class banana, but there is no material
to I would rather

There is only the reality of the choice of now
Bound by a web of my making to be a part of it
And I guess I am happy for the only here that is


Jack Sadicario calls both New York and Philadelphia “home” in abstract but
is currently living in Richmond, VA. With Alina Pleskova, Jack co-edits
bedfellows, a Philadelphia based literary magazine focused on intimacy &
relationships bedfellowsmagazine.com. The eleventh issue is currently
available online. A chapbook length portfolio of their poems entitled Herd
| Buffalo
was published in the last printed Verse Magazine Edition.
Jack’s work can be found in Prolit, trinity review, grief diaries among
other places.

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