I squeeze my eyes—now tight, now looser—
and dark squints back before it flees
with little unreal sparks of luster.
They give me something to believe
almost: the mind’s own chancy dregs
of blind experience which feel
halfway to truth, halfway alleged…
From clouds, a freckled shadow falls,
and you—you’re history’s brief fragments,
some pinchbeck trinket feigning gold.
The dusk-lit hillsides put on drag;
birds riddle feeders with their holes.
Will Cordeiro has published work in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and The Threepenny Review. Will authored Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, forthcoming 2024) and co-authored Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Will received an MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.