Heart-shaped Box of Chocolates

Then the light falling across first the floor, then the pond, first the ceiling and then the sky, is a pathetic thing. The obstacle is real, about three cubits high, as wide as a man’s arm when he stops reaching, starts retracting the swarm of fingerprints, unwilling to damage another leaf, another pitiful petal; and by itself it has the strength to un-man fantastical apparitions that were growing in that glowing shapelessness, by standing in their way and creating a duplicate of nothingness, a replica of its accordion-pleated sides minus everything but the silhouette, its ordinary holiness.

Doors make up merely
half the entranceways
you’ve closed, intrinsically.
Restless nightmares

swivel on hinges whenever
you go back, come away,
another dilating super-nova
woven in Stonehenge-

like concentrics, pacing
with pockets around your
hands. It takes patience
to beg for love once a year.





Jeffrey Jullich is the author of Thine Instead Thank (Harry Tankoos Books, 2007) and Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis (Litmus Press, 2010). He has been published in various literary journals, including Fence, New American Writing, and Poetry. Recordings and videos of him reading may be found on the Poetry Foundation website. He wrote the libretto for the opera, Videos of American Lit: The Hawthorne-Melville Correspondence, available on Youtube. He was the publisher and editor of the literary journal, Logopoeia. He lives in Manhattan.