“vanishing aubade” and other poems
O bobolink. The bobolink is dead
at my door — found leaving my apartment
to school then to work. After some searching,
I guess it’s a bobolink—this lemon-
headed crow, this crumpled parachute cloth.
My daughter takes it in her hands, careful
to first remove her fake diamond ring. I
go back inside for a shoe box coffin,
return to my daughter spreading wide her
narrow glittering hands; frozen dimes spill
onto the concrete. I thought I woke a
morning glory exhaling a dawn mist
over the pines, breathe collapsing into vapor.
after Omar
My dude —
how did you arrive
so quickly?
You appeared
like a flock
of crowding starlings
over a funeral
procession
of millions
coming & going
like faith
at dusk—
this faith
that thickens & wanes
with the strength of the wind
or some other
force of nature
I cannot perceive
yet see all around me
how you conjured
a congregation
of water-bearers arriving home
to bury those that never left.
Did you ever lose hope
in us, sheikh?
The ones who slept
through it all? The ones still
sleeping? Isn’t that such an easy question
to lob from all the way over here?
Fronting like a Sufi mystic
with reeds for fingers,
head in hand,
begging to be pulled
through —
[adhan]
I harmonize through this
busted tailpipe throat. My muffler
wheezes. I would say I was junk
yard dog, but the mirrors of my mind yet unbroken.
[standing]
Giventhe choice,
I make myself
a lake,
a babbling
brook slungtongue
at the head.
[bowing]
I am at the base of some valley
flooding the sky with my face.
If you’ll allow me to speculate
for a moment, I’d drown the blue
out myself. I am all red water, and no,
dear reader, there is no blood in this
poem. I will not let there be blood
in this poem.
[prostration]
What happens after this is yours,
but this scrawling ripple stippled
tide is paleolithic past tense
bent round itself
till the ocean is all
that’s left.
[prostration, again]
Water and salt return
to water and salt.
[sitting]
If anyone is left on this earth,
they’ll find the ruins of a used car
lot next to a liquor store at the edge of the city
where my mama’s bones still stay.
[salam alaikum]
Attend to this, friend: this song, this burial,
this holy water be praised, this wet interment
stretching farther into the collapsing
distance than ever we could.
Author's note: The title is paraphrased from Percy Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry.”
