an Aotearoa poetry journal | ISSN 2744-3248

Poems by Joel Schueler

The Severance

Joel Schueler

Published on
page 37 of Tarot #5
(Dec 2022)

The severance is conspiring
with the furrowed horizontals
in desiring to halve a face anew.
The antichrists are desperate
in their proclivity for fissure.
Seek, they might, a sidling
of the theatrical truth
or a sidling of the truth that’s just downright taciturn.
Sense may still yet come
devouring the memories inside
the corpse.
Perching is a lust
for societal polarity
or a lust for the sacral recipes of disease
or a lust for furthering the war in Ukraine.
The severance can only do so much,
such is the omnipresent union of nihilism.