There were so many omens

by Adrian Dallas Frandle

Pelly Benassi

There were so many omens. First, there was the circle of ravens hovering over the roof of my morning coffee. Then, on the way to the bank, two hawks separately riding the gyres. A blue truck bannering, “Jesus the living Bread.” Red shoes on an old man. Three atms, all broken. Amongst the signs, I waded through La Mer by Debussy, awash in a painted memory of the sea. Awoke to a dream of driving through fog. Later on, the bat weaved a sunset under the waxing crescent moon, which had tilted almost enough to cup an ounce of twilight; one slivered side of beginning exposed. A dark plane escaped east across my vision. The demon inside swaddled itself in sweaters, becoming drowsy and impatient as August. Leaves fell in a tantrum. They cried, what if the sky rose up around us, an oracular flood? Would we envy the openness of the ocean? Once I had an answer but no tongue. A cipher, a zero, a ring can be so many things. See, all points in a small circle are mappable to larger circles. Scale is only a trick of dimension. Opportunity a projection of origin unfolding. But what of a world of obfuscation, obscurity and ownership? O, omega & omicron! Are these not messages, looped into the cochlea’s whorl? I do tend to give too much credence to secrets tucked inside what the afternoon whispers. Crows who crown the horizon, whose head do you fit? I listen. I try to listen.

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Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes poems to and for the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Lit Mag/Press, Editor at Sledgehammer Lit & a poetry first reader for Pidgeonholes & Okay Donkey Lit Mag. BOTN ’22 Nominee. Find their work online at adriandallas.com