Can’t you see two steps in front of you?
Before the law stands a gatekeeper:
his skin is pale & shirt is blue.
He names it Holy Ruins, spreading sand on the paper.

Before the law stands a gatekeeper,
why they push themselves on me I don’t know.
He sprays sand on the paper, Holy Ruins he whispers.
There are abstract notions the court can’t contend with,

why they push themselves on me I don’t know.
The quiet cathedral’s plaster falls to the floor.
There are disparate notions for which the court can’t contend.
It receives you when you come, dismisses you when you go.

In the dim cathedral plaster crashes to the floor.
I’ve always wanted to seize the world with twenty hands,
receiving it as it comes, dismissing when it goes.
A scratch of disposition blue runs down the canvas.

I want to hold the world with twenty hands,
smokestack lacquer fills my throat with wax.
Scratches of deposition run down the blue canvas.
They call it Don Quixote, fingers between my legs.

Smokestack lacquers our sore throats.
His shirt is pale & his skin is blue.
They call him fingers Quixote, swarming between my legs.
Can’t you see two steps in front of you?

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Charles Kell is the author of Cage of Lit Glass, chosen by Kimiko Hahn for the 2018 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. His poetry and fiction have appeared in the New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Kestrel, Columbia Journal, The Pinch, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island and associate editor of The Ocean State Review. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Rhode Island with a dissertation on experimental writing, criminality and transgression in the work of James Baldwin, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joanna Scott and C.D. Wright.