This train has a lavatory like an airplane
and uniformed women in red tunics serve
snacks and beer. I close my eyes
and think of those boyhood subway rides
through the Bronx. My father jumped the turnstile
and told me to crawl underneath
so we could save the 50-cent fare.
I couldn’t wait to be tall like my father and hurl
myself over the turnstile, a sort of working-class
Olympic event. The turnstiles are different
today, more like revolving doors
with fortified steel gates. My father and his New York
are long gone, lost to America’s restless rusting.
My father never left the U.S., even when he served
in the Army. With my eyes still closed I see
him sitting beside me now: on a high-speed train
pumping through the veins of our Italian
homeland with my wife, who sips a Prosecco
and me a Peroni while I read Richard Blanco,
and I hear my father’s voice asking not how we paid
our fare but, rather, if.…
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and on the days when I miss you / the night is blanked black / all I have to keep me company are the not-quite-strangers performing their selves online / no stars / so strange that I know their favourite sex toy and their grandmother’s maiden name / to misunderstand laughter / and no notion of their faces animated by words / are they satellites / we collide mouths from a distance / I am there but not really / honey, cooled by winter, stuck to the plastic / I remember the way your hair avoided the parting and just flopped over your face / you read the poem aloud in the translated French / a lift-off / to be kissed by curls / tonight the moon stands as absence / cobbled by tenderness / and I slaughter myself to remake one memory
– SK Grout…
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“If I open the door he’ll flash and fade
like heat lightning behind a bank of clouds
one summer night at the edge of the world.”
—Mark Bibbins
All the men finally died, and that
was a wonderful thing. I knew
exactly where it would happen:
the beds they never slept in. Their legs
gliding like gazelles, their arms
by their sides, then on their knees.
They were all equestrian-themed,
unicorn stamps on their hands
that never washed off and too much
tequila. All the men said their love
swelled, in piles of wolf pictures
never hung, and they waited
for more secrets. They imagined
themselves as hidden artifacts,
either sacred or tired of humanity.
When they died, thousands of purple
flower buds opened at the base
of a mountain and said thank you.…
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We listened to the ceaseless tick of the clock in the hall
and spoke about growing old together. You said,
“It wouldn’t be so bad as we thought.”
“Birds,” you claimed, “have both wings and feet.”
When I woke the air was filled not with the scent
of your cologne, nor the gentle hum of blues riffs.
All that now remains are sheets that lay scattered,
crumpled, like the restless sea and the faded lily.
Its petals mark the days, one at a time
falling in heaps upon the nightstand
and I press each between the pages
of the book you abandoned, half finished.
If only you had left your shadow behind as well,
so that in your absence I could still trace
the outline of your body.…
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In the bay, as always, I think about plunging into the water. Far out in the surf are porpoises, but no fish are biting. The path curved around the island and we looked into it: eyes into eyes, and holly branches improbably stretching upward where the sky is grey. Later, I had questions for you— like where were you looking when I was on the edge of the water. Why are we always standing next to each other, but not facing each other? Which part of the island is more stable. Which part bows to salt spray. When will the solid land become a series of smaller islands? In the sunken forest, the trees were pruned by saltwater. I feel very far away from my own body.…
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Bright jade jack pines
strike against sky,
surround the lake in full,
a catch to keep
the magic in.
Whiskey Jacks perch, invisible.
Their whistles and chirrups
bounce between branches,
stir the air as a paddle
stirs water, ripples peeling
from the blade with every dip.
Paddle until dark,
circle until your arms burn
and shoulders ache,
until the lake trout stop
their trick flips
and the sky opens.
Night turns it transparent,
fades the sky in slow gradient,
bright blue soaking into black
like wet spill into rag.
It lets the light through,
magnetic pinpoints of flood
that sew lake and sky close,
the gap between pressed thin,
every prick and sparkle
reflected, carried on the ripples
of your blood stream, spinning
with the cells, a golden match, stars so thick they could be water. …
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A medieval circle dance
We are turtles.
That is correct.
We have grown shells
firm and round
and we know how to use them.
If you wait,
we will stretch our orange-speckled necks,
show you the strength of our legs.
If you wait, we will run.
You are not elephants.
That is correct.
Although you have their eyes,
each of you,
deep and seeing.
Your fingers give you away,
and the many small connections in your feet.
You touch the earth lightly,
flex to what’s beneath.
They are horses.
That is correct.
Everything lithe and sure
that we dreamed we could be
but always woke before seeing.
We—the almost-elephants and the turtles—
watch breathless:
they herd and flow,
rolling the earth’s orbit as they pass.
In the dust and silence they leave behind
we unfold our legs and necks,
gather ourselves into a circle
and dance,
letting our bodies sway
with the things we’ve seen,
the things we believe.…
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