No Artificial Sweeteners

/ Issue 13.2 /

Flickering so inconsistently in
and into being, footman to the tyrannies
of World Event and Serotonin,
not to mention negative ions, power lines,
digestion, it was very natural
His Darkness should burn a bewildering
percentage of his time trying to self-define.
He measured his usefulness to society
against the baskets of lemons people
leave on the sidewalk in lemon season,
grimaced. It was that season. The moon rose,
the little dogs came out for one last pee
before bed, and above Telegraph, a billboard
flickered: Dave’s Killer Bread. Purpose in every loaf.

Noah Warren

Noah Warren

Noah Warren is the author of The Complete Stories (2021) and The Destroyer in the Glass (2016), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Recent poems appear in The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He is a PhD student in English at UC Berkeley and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford.
Noah Warren

Also by Noah Warren (see all)

Author: Noah Warren

Noah Warren is the author of The Complete Stories (2021) and The Destroyer in the Glass (2016), winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Recent poems appear in The Paris Review, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He is a PhD student in English at UC Berkeley and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford.