The Platonic What’s at Stake

by Lauren Hilger

When the weather breaks like this we never talk about it.
It reminds us of a woman.

The form under the small black umbrella
and orange skirt. August.
And you’re like this too underneath.
Somewhere you’re like this too.
The high waisted skirt makes you walk
like you’ve something to hide, like you have illicit bites.

Sweating like the grass.
Any idiot with a phone is pretending this is all square,
that if you refresh enough times he’ll appear.
Footnotes to him afterward . . . any philosophy a note to him,
the chariot, the charioteer, the two horses.

I have that female hysteria.
I have that no place,
that lost nude, that
expired ID of the loved place,

that I shouldn’t be here.

The Platonic what.

The perfect form
of what—

The human form. The Platonic-
sentient form.

The what can’t happen happened
and you know it.

Published on July 2, 2014