Often I’m awakened by awful noises,
jackhammers, dynamite, walls crumbling
and bigger ones climbing the sky
in their places. My future arrives and I
have to settle for it. I don’t understand how
I got here any more than a lobster understands
how it ended up in a tank next to a Please wait
to be seated sign, but both of us can read
the faces of the cruelly beautiful women
pointing at us. I always feel eyes on me,
so I apologize to insects after I kill them
and to the salmon on my plate, caught
being nostalgic for home. Everything makes sense
if you squint just right, and at least once a day
I realize that whatever I’ve been saying
isn’t the point at all. I spend most days listening
to other people almost making sense, and I don’t
ask them what the hell they’re talking about
because they’re on television or the radio, or
because I’m eavesdropping from the next table.
When I’m not talking or listening, I’m in a
boil, my shell softening. I’m getting a good look
at a wrecking ball. I’m crumbling.
I volunteered for all this, accidentally,
by raising my hand, intending to ask
a question I couldn’t put into words.

–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World (2013)
Accents Publishing

More from Scotch Tape World and Tom C. Hunley:

• Tom C. Hunley’s “Most Important Thing”
• “Having Banished the Musicians” from Bigger than They Appear
• Accents Poets Nominated for the Pushcart
• “No One to Ask for Directions”
• “World’s Shortest Pantoum” from Bigger than They Appear

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.