SALT LAKE CITY — Spencer Ballard is a published poet living in Salt Lake City with his pet rat, Emerson. He is currently plowing through his senior year in the creative writing program at the University of Utah. Ballard is in a complicated relationship with a typewriter; his spirit animal is a goat, and he gets along well with anyone who makes a mean guacamole.
Doze
By Spencer Ballard
9:16 to 10:17 my mind ebbs,
a broken yolk,
how like silk butter these sheets are
spread over the curves of this body that
careens like a canyon carved by
saliva pooling around this tongue and this throat
I have not noticed until now
the feeling of a single caloric fire
burning its way from brain to
brushing the hair away from
phosphenes scattering and
regrouping like
seagulls.