Joshua Ware

Imaginary Portrait

You stand in a desert somewhere

west of Reno and rant about cowboys,

nationalism, and murder. But you also lie

in a budget bed in North Platte, Nebraska

and watch yourself on a computer screen

as you stand in a desert of grayscales

somewhere west of Reno and rant

about cowboys, nationalism,

and murder. But you are also words

in this poem, which is to say

the joyous confusion of pronouns.

Joshua Ware lives in Denver, CO. He is the author of Homage to Homage to Homage to Creeley, which won the 2010 Furniture Press Poetry Prize, as well as several chapbooks. Recently, his manuscript How We Remake the World: A Concise History of Everything, which he co-wrote with the poet Trey Moody, won the first annual Slope Editions Chapbook Prize. New work appears or is forthcoming in Country Music, Conduit, Cream City Review, diode, ILK, Nano Fiction, and Third Coast.