Storm Toward Morning. Malachi Black
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all but disappeared—like the whiteness
of a smoke after it’s cleared. And you’ve been on
this train too long to know the time: you’re lost
between the meter and the desperate rhyme
of clacking tracks. Home is nothing here.
You’re gone and in the going; can’t come back.
Insomnia & So On
Fat bed, lick the black cat in my mouth
each morning. Unfasten all the bones
that make a head, and let me rest: unknown
among the oboe-throated geese gone south
to drop their down and sleep beside the out-
bound tides. Now there’s no nighttime I can own
that isn’t anxious as a phone
about to ring. Give me some doubt
on loan; give me a way to get away
from what I know. I pace until the sun
is in my window. I lie down. I’m a coal:
I smolder to a bloodshot glow. Each day
I die down in my bed of snow, undone
by my red mind and what it woke.
Coming & Going
All day long I plunge into the ether
like a tongue into a fragile glass
of water. Thirsty for an urgency
to squint in the crouched sun, to turn
the doorknob of a corner, to open
up into an avenue and run,
I clop unevenly along the sidewalks,
crooked and vaguely caving in,
like some demented, avid mailman.
Though I know no one is expecting me,
worrying a wristwatch, pacing
and awaiting and awaiting
my delivery, I stroll just the same:
there must be something in the air to blame.
To the Moon
Once you were a bubble on the surface
of a puddle made of rain. Once you were
the bottom of a birthday hat. Once
you were the forehead of a newborn,
boring and forlorn. Once you were
and so you anciently remain: turning away
from me a little more each day. I say
your name. I say what others say. I
only have one word for you. Today
you’re already awake and it’s today.
You’re already awake. Are you in love
with me? What and whom exactly do you see
when I am weary-eyed but wired, crookedly
looking up to you as you look down on me?
Sifting in the Afternoon
Some people might describe this room as spare:
a bedside table and an ashtray and an antique
chair; a mattress and a coffee mug;
an unwashed cotton blanket and a rug
my mother used to own. I used to have
a phone. I used to have another
room, a bigger broom, a wetter sponge.
I used to water my bouquet
of paperclips and empty pens, of things
I thought I’d want to say if given chance;
but now, to live, to sit somehow, to watch
a particle of thought dote on the dust
and dwindle in a little grid of shadow
on the sunset’s patchy rust seems just enough.
Ode to the Sun
You repeat yourself like no one
I know. Steadily somewhere,
you roll unnoticeably forward
even now, showing. Your finger
lifts the flowers and their faces
by the chin, but you will leave them
behind like blown-out beach
umbrellas. You will always reach
and extend. You will always
try to keep me to yourself on Monday
mornings: You will glare and I will go,
but you don’t care and you can’t know.
I will look at you too long and cry.
I will wonder where you’ve gone, at night.
I’ll fall asleep and dream: an acorn.
You are nothing but a breast, round
behind a blouse of clouds built to be
unbuttoned. You love: You share
yourself and you are always naked:
You love: You show us how to take
our places: You love: You cover our faces
This Gentle Surgery
Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze
glides almost too easily through me,
and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to
some flap of me is freed: I am severed
like a simile: an honest tenor
trembling toward the vehicle I mean
to be: a blackbird licking half-notes
from the muscled, sap-damp branches
of the sugar maple tree… though I am still
a part of any part of every particle
of me, though I’ll be softly reconstructed
by the white gloves of metonymy,
I grieve: there is no feeling in a cut
that doesn’t heal a bit too much.
Psalm: Pater Noster
I am your plum:
Enfold me
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