poor room for a sonnet
by Matthew Nisinson
by Ivan Albright, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago
No, I am going to make my endless world
in a confined space. No time, no end, no today
no yesterday, no tomorrow. Now my world
will be flatness on flatness, layered forever
and forever and forever without end. No room
for depth, for nuance, for insight. Flat. No, you
will just have to gaze. Flat hands, flat feet, no
room for pain, no room for the absence
of pain. No room for absence, only flat now.
Everything here, everywhen, always and contin-
uous. No order to it. No disorder to it. At once
and always. Poor room, we press on. Flat forever
and forever and forever flat. We are. We both just are.
Matthew Nisinson (he/him) is a proud New Yorker living in Queens with his wife and daughter and their two cats. He has a JD, and a BA in Latin. Each summer he grows chili peppers. By day he is a bureaucrat. His poetry has appeared in en*gendered, Hyacinth Review, and Milk Press, among others. You can find him on Instagram or Threads @lepidum_novum_libellum and on Twitter and Bluesky @mnisinson.
