Devotion

Listen, I tell me. There’s so much
to forget. We read every word,

even the blueprints for the temple,
and the unimaginable dead. I would

never live there. I remember the cedars,
the cubits. My mother slept through most of it,

would wake to add another detail, and fade
back into the city. We were building

the city. You could do that.
It rang out as long as our voices did.

Matinal

Early-morning dark, and there’s a man
in the kitchen weighted down by sheet-

pans beaten into a cuirass. Not knowing
what they eat who are so dead as to be spun

from sugar and plague-rhyme, I offer a little
of everything—apples, bread, coffee, beer—even

my cat’s tinned chicken. He’s wearing a battle-skirt
of leather strips, and when he paces, I can

see his balls. He was betrayed,
his litter-mates die at dawn.

What a terrible place he’s vanished to. I have
nothing good to say. When his shadows deliver

their burning letter of writ, we forget
our excuses, our very good reasons. I once

thought things would stay the same, only worsen
incrementally. He’d saved up years’ worth

of nail clippings for such an occasion,
and it’s a long way home. Goodbye, oblivion.

Poem With No Blessing

A boy named Mort (I shit
you not) with Robert Smith inked
on his breast; my great-aunt Fran and the rabbit

she gave me that you could wind to play a clear
needle song; a brass key; a name; a book;
a summer day in Campina Grande when Sílvio and I

found a man heaped under a tree who (drunk?
dead?) stank and had bled. We returned
to his house to play video games

and remain with whatever we couldn’t
comprehend—all of it, and only if I don’t
hold on too dearly, only if I don’t stumble

retracing the way back, as though it were possible
to hide from some great beast
by keeping within its footprints.

I really don’t think I’ll mind dying—
all I’ve misplaced comes back—
but something has been bothering me,

and I haven’t figured it out yet.
How do you do it? How
is anyone still alive? 

After Joseph Cornell’s The Lanner Waltzes

With what joy were we
bathed in blue, learned

our steps, buttressed in Winter’s
finest crinoline. We could have danced

forever on a single leaf.

The sun has stopped going
away now. It will do no more

this season. Don’t banish us.

Don’t break the spell. Who told
you the stars are cold?