While you compare apertures
with an adulteress
I spend the afternoon drawing orbs
without wearing my apron.
What is the relationship of osmosis to emulsion?
The way sound can expand above water.
A flock of paper birds costumes the sun,
flying so close their wings fold into each other.
You suggest couples yoga:
a mountain allows one to rest.
I’ve also experimented with relief,
slicing the skin between my toes
and lip joints to open them
like a land mass.
You look for a precipice near the kitchen
but the fog is filling the room like a clot
though it echoes the refrigerator’s hum
as if there were something more within the vapor
as if it were singing us a tiny song.
I always feel like a ghoul
when dawn lumbers out of the woods
and crosses the street.
If a ghoul has a favorite color
then the color is lavender,
but smells like chamomile.
I’m sketching the silhouette
of this town, connecting the townsfolk
to their shadows.
Each line has a color.
This color is milk white
and was adopted as an infant,
does not know its father,
but lingers around ladders and steps
like daylight inside curtain folds
and spoons.
Lingers like the smirk
across the ghoul’s face I picture
when I think ghoul.
Philip Muller is an artist and writer from southeast Florida. he is interested in shapes and wind. He will begin an MFA at Emerson College in the fall. He is constantly annoyed with his girlfriend's cat "Yossarian."