IV
Who is naked is hidden at their beginning
without their end there to hide them
no covering to go outside
in their games children invent laws
they keep usefully for joy or break
joyfully for use—
a great disintegration thereby undone
hereby concerned with the turning
at the far edge right here, bridges and veils
please cross and taste this
what before it existed should have been my shame
afterward became my fruit
Nick Maione’s poetry collection, Infinite Arrivals (Angelico), will be published this May. His work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, The Common, jubilat, and Peripheries. He edits the poetry recitation journal Windfall Room and is the founder and director of Orein Arts Residency in Upstate New York.
