While the Ball Keeps Bouncing Against the Wall (2025), Maria Golosnaya

FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION

Evan Kerr

Against the ineluctable lucidity

Of tomorrow playing tricks in salt and dirt

And letting skin purple then blue

It was useful to be good, it was

A wind of shifting tenses

In the gearbox of night

Life colliding with life

Stars dyed in pixelated blood

Something extra lost

Down the side of language’s garish wound

Sad eyes and mouth a duplex receptacle

Forsaking hope in light

Well I dedicate these words to no one

Representing nothing

Libidinal ornaments stitched loose

Along the edges of eroding center

And thought

Breaking promises quickly made

Against the recourse to what came before

Evan Kerr is writer from Baytown, Texas. When not writing he can be found reading and struggling to write. Sometimes he plays guitar. In the fall, he will begin a PhD in English literature at the University of Virginia.