—a transcontemporation of Vallejo

I caress my S-drive which holds what’s left

of her, my memory— all 3 MB of her. Her vulva

only opening in Acrobat Reader 4.0, her hair still

snaked around my drain, reared from my living

room, she’d dance and land such blows, she was my

hobby, I was afraid she would g(r)o(w) …

I caress my S-drive which holds what’s left

of her, what wasn’t saved makes an ocean, an ocean

without waves, storm without eye, 33 fathoms

of forget me (k)not(t)s, but still there is the memory

from lip to lip, there R the Sampson pillars of Work,

there is the bed that absence makes, a place to lie

yourself into.

I fail to save, and lose all I worked for.

I’ll never touch that torso of mist; the bull of my

ego, still stands in a field where a girl runs her hand

over wheat, as if it were inevitability, she will grow

into woman, into sun—

without weight she will drown.

And female is the soul of her absence.

And female is my own soul.

____Sampson Starkweather was born in Pittsboro, NC. He is writing a book of transcontemporations based on Cesar Vallejo's Trilce. Some of his poems are recently published or forthcoming from: LIT; jubilat; RealPoetik; Absent; New York Quarterly; Sink Review and have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.