Ian U Lockaby

Issue 53
Spring 2025

Ian U Lockaby

Having an empty house with you

felt like an expanding pane
in the window, phantom
ass limbs sore as the days
sat down
upon months, thinking
too much and never enough
alone, wanting just
to be alone with
you, still, tasting
the brass
inside the window-
lit weight of time
knowing life was
upon us still, our
veins thicken with
humid hearing
busted rigs shred the road out-
side, or idle
low against all
day—citronella lit
the house-piers, above
which I have
am having an
empty house with
you whose gravity
weights its careen
through space
faster than purpled angels
fleeing the sun
time moves
non-sequentially anymore
our address therefore
too changes again
and again
like the month
the wages garnished in
to afford more and more
demise, but always
first return
to bask awhile in all this
—pollinated light—
through which
everything first emerges then
returns to—
in that: all this
in some way
has been and will be
always but can’t be
any longer I’ve
been waiting
for you all night, feeling
my veins stringy
angels of
charitable returning
blood from my
stunned extremities
leaving only empty
houses inside
the touch of my far
away fingers, like
welcome home
is the ghost

Location History

Turned on, in a space

made

grieving pronoun

in how many

ways

one can say

‘I saw you there’

in arms of the deal

[heard] / like

[seen in the distance]

Inside corked

humidities of

nerve fiber wrecks /

an ending

and endings

[heard] / like

[sewn over in the distance]

You are seen by them

armed in the deal