Culprit

Our contact with the world is as direct in vague thought as it is in any thought.
—Timothy Williamson

Accumulated delicacies
and laid at every table

emergency numbers, phenylethylamine
or whatever brings a fingertip into focus

fuzz like a ghost
you’re maybe looking for

the last face abandoned
to create nothing out of something

we only dance and moan.

Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and art critic living in London, he writes regularly for Artforum and The Nation, among others. His new collection of poems, Book Left Open in the Rain, is just barely out from Black Square Editions, New York.