After You Slipped Into the Void We Hoped You Were Still Alive and Writing, But What I Really Want To Know Is, Have You Read “The Last Question,” By Isaac Asimov?

By Toren Wallace

we gaze
backward
at the same ocean
we walk along
the same streetswe herd consciousness/doubt
in droves
correlative
meditative
pristinedissolute punctuation
wasted clock/spacelost
wallet
fountain pen.

let me
hold you in my arms/soul
caressing the apparition
in the fogBruce
Boydnot of the
body/worldand senseless worth,
lost in the
void
between
Zen
nowhereand New Jersey.

(whisper
new poem:

murmuring savagery)
ligature marks
figuratively ask foran illusory dialogue
a handkerchief
a private moment.
stacked words like
firewood
dine inside a
picture frame.

we take our seat
we order poems
and drown
in/congruity

river
rocks …………skipped
inwardly
away
effervescent memory
an unfamiliar whore
fastidious.