swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

more roaring / more
b.h.fein & adi n.

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walking arnold’s dover beach

naked, beshingled, / i take my leave and skirt the promenade / to search for ghosts / between lunch
specials / and matinees. / oh, they say a great mind once strode, / uncapped and famished, / toward
those white peaks / and marvelled at une côte française; / that he has been waiting on the nearby /
pariahanous, pirahnaous craigs, / so soft, / denticulate, / fully in the corruption of history, /
casting love bites at passing warblers / or raucous may-tourists, reservists, the ig-influencé, / and
rueing and fomenting and churning / like the ocean mist. / i want to speak with him / (not that
he’ll have words for me) / to tell him, if anything, / there is less light now / more roaring / more
armies clashing / by night and clay. / (will he understand what a drone strike is?) / i want to tell
him that / the sea of faith / has been purchased and bottled / for sale on a warm day. / but he will
know this already / like all spirits do / and sigh / and turn again to the / cliffs and strike against
them that old cadence / so that whatsoever is implicit in their ache for life, / their moon-blanched
erasure, / broad as sophocles’ oral ægean, / the heart, too, would take unto itself, / its greater plains /

and betray.

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adi n. (they/them) & b. h. fein (they/them) are not fine.