No one quite knows, but surely the future will be a minefield of dark,
         explosive degeneracy.
People who do not see the terrible things therefore do not see the
         beautiful things, either.

If your memory is good, then everything you remember is not.
The proper of the event deposes the common of the concept.

Something forbidden or enticing was behind every door.
These processes are unconscious, but anxiety won’t be.

Extreme must be exhausted.
Sexuality doesn’t go away.

Prison, illness, abuse, drugs, abandonment, deportation: all traumas have
         their literature.
I was staring at the ceiling, and the ceiling was showing reruns.

       §

“The 555 Sonnets are made with found lines and precise measures, a database and text analytic software. I crunched Shakespeare’s sonnets for word, syllable and character averages and these are my new measures. The lines’ oddities are their own, the arrangement is mine. After the text analytics and data entry, many ways of assembling are found. I hold to the turn (when I think of it) and that sonnets are poems of a certain size, but little more. Something in excess of the lines pass through, it’s that I’m chasing.” – j. l.
item #13533
title: n/a
form: sonnet
index: john lowther

John Lowther’s work appears in An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside (UNO, 2012), Another South: Experimental Writing in the South (University of Alabama, 2003), and Stone, River, Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems (Negative Capability, 2015). Held to the Letter (with Dana Lisa Young) is forthcoming from Lavender Ink.
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