wink books, inc. by Rob Budde

over, there's the page where the language would have you 
sold, secure; flipside, this is
the one that got away, fin flash
 
a story stalled long pauses and awkward
breaks enough to glimpse blur, flinch
 
the grain of wood, sawdust scent
flying up, the topography closer though, 
felt in the roll of thighs, the eye-trained horizon, squint
 
after the speech, denial loaded into the back
a reverb stings the microphone; flipside, the subtext
twitches, an aside snuck, tucked
 
intimate meaning alongside the highways and
their agenda, a noise that rips the killed, rends
 
flipside; a book of herbs or ways of preserving
berries, fin and fat, paper-stained accidents and care, creased
 
i would give you this first from Fort George before
the forest wars, or from after, a de-settling
pinch of paper and bone