(Ján Jakub Naništa/Unsplash)

Now it is midnight.

Inside the house

rooms begin to change.

Something in them

ripens and swells

and pushes against

all four walls.

Call it night

or the silence of night

or something silent that

happens at night—

when shipwrecked dreamers,

drowning in sleep,

sink ever lower

as cold currents keep

easing them down

into their own

inner deep.

Tom Hansen’s poems appear in recent or forthcoming issues of the Midwest Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, New American Writing, Southern Poetry Review, and others. His book Falling to Earth was published by BOA Editions.

Also by this author
Published in the November 2020 issue: View Contents
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