Adam Fieled (Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): from Something Solid, The Nineties, "Perfect"

The poster of Monroe, dousing herself in
cologne, was you, yourself, again— had to
be perfect, as you said; as Jennifer was you,
yourself again, perfectly, as didn’t need to
be said, couldn’t have been anyway, then.
I imagine you, wandering down to that dank
basement, with a sense of symmetry in your
brain about what had been, would be. By
the time it was time, your hair had darkened,
but the core of you remained bright, as bright
as it had been in the house on South Atherton
Street. It was your turn to cut down the middle,
offer up your vision of perfection to a man who
appeared to you more than a curiosity— sharper.

The shock of making love amid a sea of paper,
piles upon piles— my own vision of perfection
had arrived, on the wings of the Symbolists, as
they were me, myself, again, etc. The space we
were able to inhabit that autumn, a from-here
armistice season against Hell, couldn’t last, but
we didn’t need it to. Rather, if we cut into each
other at the right angles, a fossil shell imprint
would be left on State College, and the whole world;
pungent, starkly ravishing enough to last our
own un-warped version of forever. So it has
been for me. As to where and what you cut down
the middle of, as we speak— we’ll see if I’m
pure enough to know anymore, Emily. Maybe.

© Adam Fieled 2022

Perfect in Otoliths 65

Perfect in PennSound