Dispatch #32

Outside In

Over the past few days, this newsletter has received quite an influx of new subscribers. I am incredibly grateful.

At this point, we’re approaching 1,000 subscribers — 1,000 people interested in receiving a poem in their inbox a few times a month from someone not affiliated with a single institution, and with no help from Official Poetry Culture.

That’s an achievement.

Thank you for joining me here.

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Many blessings—

Joseph

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Outside In

A path of overlapping
roots, shallow
gravel pile—

an orange
rind hung up
in webbed brush.

Voice doesn’t fail
to fall to vision
while sundown’s

serrated gauze
draws the breath
against itself. Barely

enough sun now
to cinch together
this run-on sentence

of objects reaching
to be seen
to organize the field.

The few leaves left
twist and spit back

at light, thin
as it is, light.