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Spencer Silverthorne
The Speaker is Listening to “Easy”
by Troye Sivan with Kacey Musgraves
on the Occasion of a Group Inspection
of a Controlled Blaze
(excerpted from Occasions for Listening WIP)
0:04
One
by one
red
GTVs
blight
the greens.
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
I always dreamed that you would take my last asset.
0:36
Watch
when subscribers
come collared
starch hot
before they wick
the place.
0:47
They pale with chatter:
SUBSCRIBER 1
The more I strain to survey…
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
…the more you skulk between orchards in a negotiation between material and mist.
UNIFIED SUBSCRIBER MANAGEMENT
That kind of cottaging is prohibited.
1:00
So play dull
all evening
as if they
expect the sky
to network
less and less;
for the loom
of settling
the score
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
It’s cruel by the centering pool.
is a century’s
progress
toward
a timeless
cascade
of Tauri light.
1:41
SUBSCRIBER 2
Is that some pyrolysis bug in your eye?
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
I make abandonment cunning but I am unable to make a canyon happen.
UNITED SUBSCRIBER MANAGEMENT
Reports forthcoming.
1:52
Subscribers
could end
up bellied
in the flicker.
No evening
could satiate
the drive
to scuttle.
2:22
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
Have I quailed the space properly?
SUBSCRIBER 3
But you don’t have the copper – shameful!
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
If I hedge dissonance with vision, then I’ll pass.
2:30
Takes only one
to know the loose
valve/value, enough
pit in the thaw.
2:47
An evening like this begs
for a string of casualty:
UNIFIED SUBSCRIBER MANAGEMENT
Hot means nothing for the wood in the wet den.
3:19
& O there’s
that one
pinch:
HOMEOWNER UNDER REVIEW
I close for pals who prostrate at the most chiseled front. The spot where I’d been sightseeing at the wrong time.
About the writer:
Spencer Silverthorne (he/him) is a poet and PhD candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He’s also the Poetry Editor at Rougarou: A Journal of Arts and Literature. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Dream Pop Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Hobart, Sundog Lit, and Westchester Review, among others. Currently he is working on a full-length collection of poetry. Explore more of Silverthorne’s work in his new pamphlet Occasions for Listening (Excerpts from a Work-in-Progress) in the 2023 PDF Pamphlet Series available now from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press.
About Troye Sivan: Troye Sivan Mellett (1995-) is an Australian singer-songwriter, YouTube personality, and actor. The song referenced in the title above is the December 2020 version of Sivan’s original, which had been released as part of the album In a Dream in July of that year.
Image: The Infinite Library Garden by DesignerMadsen with MidJourney AI. Digital image generated via MidJourney Artificial Intelligence. 2022. By free license.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide.
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