The Disappearance of Language
The dead don’t need words.
But pigeon is a nice one.
A word can be warm—
but can it pack boxes?
Pay rent?
Joyce left.
Eye patch, pipe smoke,
Dublin rain in his coat.
I sold the apartment.
He got famous.
And Finnegans Wake—
what a nightmare.
What good is a poem
when the street grows a beard?
Paris turned into a stranger.
A man smoking outside,
brown-wrapped easel in hand.
Columbus risked his life
for a map he never saw.
Or maybe he did.
And it was already dying.
I saw him in New York,
crying anaconda tears
for the New World.
It wasn’t new. Wasn’t his.
It belonged to those
we mistook for someone else—
then never asked again.
Learning it was all
claimed,
damned.
I want to be a bird,
or something edible.
A sardine.
Lightly salted.
Blake Lynch is a poet, editor, journalist, and game developer based in Virginia. He holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. His debut full-length collection, Hanging the Angels, was recently published. His poems appear in Chelsea, The Southampton Review, 2River, and South 85 Journal, among other journals. He is currently developing a narrative video game and writing his second collection, The Tin Foxes. Upcoming appearances include Cobalt Poets and the On the Same Page and Folkloring podcasts.
