Storm Toward Morning. Malachi Black

ection>

      

Note to the Reader

      Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:

      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellente

      Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.

      When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.

      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       to MSM

      I shall fall

      Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

      And no man see me more.

      Henry VIII, 3.2.225–27

      Contents

       Title Page

        Note to Reader

        Dedication

      1  I

      1  Under an Eclipsing Moon

      2  Traveling by Train

      3  Insomnia & So On

      4  Coming & Going

      5  To the Moon

      6  Sifting in the Afternoon

      7  Ode to the Sun

      8  This Gentle Surgery

      9  Psalm: Pater Noster

      10  Drifting at Midday

      11  You

      12  The Beekeeper’s Diary

      13  Rain

      14  When I Lie Down

      15  Awake

      16  Sleepwalker, Lost

      17  Face to Face

      18  Mirroring

      19  Against the Glass

      20  Quantum Solstice

      21  As a Draft

      1  II

      1  Quarantine Lauds Prime Terce Sext None Vespers Compline Nocturne Vigils Matins

      1  III

      1  A Memo to the Self-Possessed

      2  That the Bones Which Thou Hast Broken May Rejoice

      3  Query on Typography

      4  I Have Forgotten You, My Self

      5  Our Lady of Sorrows

      6  To the Executioner

      7  Morning Shows

      8  Dining after Dawn

      9  The Winter Traveler

      10  For Love of Ice

      11  Plainsong

      12  Whalesong

      13  Found

      14  Growing Season

      15  Metamorphosis

      16  Fragments from an Afterlife

      17  The Puncture

      18  Prayer for a Slow Death

        Notes

        Acknowledgments

        About the Author

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

I

Under an Eclipsing Moon

      I am the black strokes on the baby grand

      piano in whose hands I am tonight

      beside the hospital, a yellow gram

      of Valium with me in the bright

      side of this house behind a darkened high

      school baseball diamond. Here it’s too dim,

      too overcast to know what sort of slim

      lip the moon has grooved into the sky.

      So what can I, whose veins are purpled through

      with bits of broken glass and vodka,

      whose heart claps like a shoe, what can I do

      but play a drunken, pill-induced sonata,

      watch it backflip and rebound, caterwauling

      in a somersault of sound around the room?

Traveling by Train

      And faster past another frozen river,

      the brambles, shrubs, and underbrush of dead

      woods and the garbage that was left behind

      by runaways and skunks: the plastic bags

      and twine, shoes beside forgotten brands

      of beer whose cans, so battered