Justin Marks
I FEEL VULNERABLE
A society that systemically
is broken but daily must
function grinding people to dust
At work I watch videos of goats
climbing the sheer walls of a dam
to get at minerals in the rocks
necessary for their survival
Someone makes a weird noise
I now realize was a word
the name of a person they wanted
to reach An utterance
unanswered The pressure to not put
pressure on myself is intense
An arc that bends toward destruction
A vision that declares itself
an illusion I misread love as leave
and sit with that confusion
Have nothing to hide
Justin Marks’ books are If This Should Reach You in Time (Barrelhouse Books, 2022), The Comedown (Publishing Genius Press, 2021), You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored (Barrelhouse Books, 2014) and A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009). He is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in New York City with his family.