Daniel Lassell
Frame Inside a Frame
In the underworld, I expect
no dinner parties.
No small talk, no tension.
Why fear it?
Everything will be gray.
Along the riverbanks,
people will belch and fish will
bounce to surface.
It will smell like a cranky
fairgrounds.
The birds will no longer
cup solitude with their wings,
the skies filled with
inquisitive bats and slobbering demons.
Every branch will twist to ash
in their claws,
taken to wind with constant heavy
like pollen from a field,
more wandering, more fervent
than any prayer.
There will be no church-bound
stooping with ceaseless
questions about the soul.
When curtains open,
more darkness will pour in.
Daniel Lassell reads “Frame Inside a Frame.”
Daniel Lassell is the author of Frame Inside a Frame (Texas Review Press, forthcoming 2025) and Spit (Wheelbarrow Books, 2021), which won the 2020 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, the 2022 Midwest Book Awards for a poetry debut, and the 2021-22 Reader Views’ Gold Award and Inside Scoop Live Award for the Most Innovative Book of Poetry. Spit was also shortlisted for the 2022 Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award, the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize, and the 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Ad Spot (Ethel Zine & Micro Press, 2021), which received an honorable mention for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and The Emptying Earth (Madhouse Press, 2023), which was a finalist for the 2024 Medal Provocateur Award. He grew up in Kentucky, and now lives in Bloomington, Indiana.