Four Poems

X

past the third stone page 
resisting geologic futures 
written in stone glyph
the glacial theory of time 
escalation is so like tidal
refining processes edges of 
clay bed older than any glacier
laid the template and those
smaller rocks slotted in like land fill
upon the jelly roll soil horizon
slope gradient of loose sand w
those naked little trees
mound curving like a buzzcut 
saw a hand scooping its nails
and pulling out little rockslide 
canyon dirt road rising the ocean
view is a little v in the corner 
green picked out all the bald
patches peopled land plasti-
chrome ice field existence is
disputed maybe it was some
parallel valleys repeated paleo-
lithic gravel shoreline the sea 
got to work on that smoothed it 
out mythological landforms w
local evidence compelling only
to locals land filled until it’s long enough
to be named 

XII

land was a crude sketch 
at night becoming clay
land released into 
proto working waterfront
post glacial real estate
didn’t look like scenery
and clay was highway
pulled out and packed under 
paint was mixed from
blue clay and milk
the color of houses 
enough clay to make bricks for 100 years
industrialization put an end to it
burned clay to a red earth red

XXI

Tectonic halves spread 
Reentered south of the south like a stage 

Size of the great glacial leak
absorbed radio waves and telephone 

Bones and teeth in the continental shelf
I cant reach down there but they wash up glistening 
like tiles like little tiles 
Reproducing thoughts 

Using one side as a knife 
And sort of grabbing onto 

Had become so helpless 
Waylaid past the point of efficiency 
Barely legible throughout this whole thing 
This stampede

Pantomimed like tissue
Knew how to turn it on Dont mind all that static
takes it own size
Like any imitative 
object in space

Fabulist really 
imagine saying you invented a form
more like it traded into you for space
and placed an ornament on your finger 

and close beyond
low level residual glacial lake
Fingered a jug 
under the holster 
and burned a cigarette on the flyer 
like a residual glyph

XXII

So blown inside 
the full slip face 
Not adjacent 
Would not betray a system 
of expressive verbs 
so seeing 
Devastated into holes so surround ing
Marked it here
dreaming 

So much unlike in the seeing
Reversed sure 

low energy deposit moved differently 
made different things
Formed in rhythmic sets
Enriched by modern description

Even ledge on an architecture 

Sediment chain dense to light
Whatever is too large will be transported 
or left behind

∩

Liz Falco is a regional poet from Provincetown, MA. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in bethh, Farewell Transmission, Looky Here Magazine, antiphony, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (as Liz Bergman), Cape Cod Review, GROTTO, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, NO WAKE, came out in December 2025. She co-hosts Morning Shift at Looky Here in Greenfield, MA, where she now lives.