Iron in its natural state is a complex,
just like anything, held together pressure

and warmth—blocked bodies that slip
and fold, ionic, across an indistinguishable

abdomen—I cannot rest before its residue,
before its ceaseless scheming—they appear

to me as mourners mounted in honeycomb,
their feet a crawling lattice. Their arms

sometimes interlocking, shifting
elbows the odd angle; but when it does

work, they seem tiny pallbearers across
the weighted leading. At a small

parish in Philadelphia I pick through
a stack of misprinted hymnals, some

of their disasters worn on their faces—
some even more ruinous than the kerning

on the Pope’s tombstone—I saw firstborn
letters in strange procession, uneven

registrations: that awful glutton, iron
again, misshaping ink with its slack teeth.

And when I turned the page,
there still, the golden clef.

is a poet and printer from Boston, MA. His work appears in Rampage Party Press, Elderly Magazine, and Gully Magazine. He currently lives in Iowa City, IA with his two black cats.