Dyschronia Villanelle

    A contoured villanelle using "The House on the Hill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson

 
Time moves slowly, yet time slips away. 
I want to grab its tail, to hold it still
while listening to what time has to say. 

Before I fail, before my hair goes gray
and others only hear my voice as shrill,
I try to slow, as time slips away.

Sometimes I count the hours in a day
and feel dizzy, panicked, light-headed, ill  
while trying to ignore what time might say.         

The days float by like cypsela gone astray— 
I glower at the world from my windowsill  
while wisps of lost time meander away.

I brood alone. Smile to others to downplay    
the way it hounds me: Tick. Tick.  I have no skill,
no time to listen to what others say.   

I get it that I’m hell-bound toward decay.
I prefer seclusion on my isolated hill,
But as slow time speeds, shifts, slips away, 
I no longer hear what time has to say.

DUSTIN BROOKSHIRE & BETH GYLYS

Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) fourth and latest chapbook is Repeat as Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2023) and editor of When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024). Learn more at dustinbrookshire.com.

Beth Gylys (she/her) is the principal investigator of Beyond Bars, a Mellon Foundation–sponsored journal for and by incarcerated writers and artists, and an award-winning poet and Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University. Recent publications include After My Father (Dancing Girl Press, 2024) and Body Braille (Iris Books, 2021). See linktr.ee/bethgylys.