Storm Toward Morning. Malachi Black

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