Presentiment of Deliverance by Alien
In hoarse dark barbershops once I've gone I think they sweep up and save my hair. They like to watch me watch the broadcast or advise an acquaintance on the least itchy wools. I've been sure of it since I was a child, trying to fall asleep, and instead another day flared like sand in the eyes, painful even to close my face, and the light sharpened like a whistle from a train called Morning slashing the landscape in broad brown cuts, jerking voles into a lurid glut: I was made to wait for something else. They smear rust on the engines to make them seem true. And the instructions are Do nothing, tell no one. Iron is wrested up from the earth, and hours are sold every day of our lives.
Gaia Rajan is the author of the chapbook Killing It (Black Lawrence Press 2022). His work is published in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, The Kenyon Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. He reads for Poetry Northwest and lives in Chicago and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter and Instagram.