Pareidolia Me

By Josh Bettinger

My daughter’s sleep / wave machine

becomes a granular datum of cheer

red outside the window, moon

horizon like a zipper

holding the inside suspenseful

and used. Maybe water on glass

will always contain all the glass ever glazed

perfectly, a cambered riverbed

presents itself as an invention of you—

trajectories of light relocate to form you—

and each avocado tree in the yard

bends under the pressure of attentive

mamas and goose-fleshed angels

in tight coats, broken glass

drifting up across the tree line into the birds

like some drunken dropsonde

just looking for that old weather we made

in the dark the light my Rorschach

of the small things hidden inside us still.





About the author:

Josh Bettinger is a poet and editor whose work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, journals in the United States, England, Ireland, and Canada including Oxford Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, Western Humanities Review, Handsome Poetry, SLICE, The Los Angeles Review, Crazyhorse, and Boston Review, among others. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.