Two Poems by Joseph Spece

At tea with the Internet

Vzzzt it says
This is important

Look at me presently
I’m new and all of it, how

droll and junked is
the little palace

that sounds her vicissitudes
I—I—I—

 

Ax of Mine

OR, Self-Portrait as Green Knight

Chaplain, listen: invisibility
is a strange success
& not mine.

The whet of galling &
a fell
a gruesome & harrowing comport
is it not
mine, it might be—

& of matins in moorland
& spike bent through the sluice
is it mine
this body
though the worm will have it

& shall I be reasoned with

It might

& shall I loiter long like
a great dark curtain
before
gnashing my incisors
well
No

& many a goodly knight needs must
& many a goodly smile have I

& placable world of winnows here
I might & here

is this
ax of mine.

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About the Author:

Joseph Spece is editor at SHARKPACK Poetry Review. His honors in verse include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, artist fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Corrente Prize in Poetry from Columbia University. His first book of poems, Roads (Cherry Grove), appeared in 2013.