Why I Keep Disembodied Ears in a Jar

Zeke Gerwein

​His ears

Are lost in gray march with my backpack
            swollen with poems and crumpled chaucer
                                      Because he wanted me to put them in my jar when he left
And I didn’t
When he walked away
                                       apart from myself
                 there with him at the cafe that smells like glitter pants (polyester) while he finishes his                          
                                                                                                                                                            coffee
                                                                     And when we danced alone at the line of rocks on
the waterfront, nineteenth street hurdles one way
           out of the cold lake my discontent is too full of mercury and discarded packaging to
                                                                                       escape underneath East Twelfth to the bay
At high tide on a midwinter evening                        with sunlight striking the lagoon like

           when we burned the sky down together with water

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