this morning the ocean is flung out across the sheets, flagrant and languid,
beads of light on its skin, the street is slow and lazy, air thick and heavy after rain,
sliding its thighs together for the sheer pleasure of their weight, hibiscus unfurling,
batting their lashes, licking their lips like they’re sleepily eating something with honey,
bees drowse and bumble, still a little drunk from last night’s debauch,
none of them are picturing the poet
who told me years ago about the day
he understood that songs were poetry, he lay
on his best friend’s bedroom floor in brooklyn,
now he is lying on the floor of my head
with the rest of history
scattered in snapshots, sometimes polaroids, sometimes salt prints,
albumen calotype ambrotype tintype daguerreotype cyanotype
gelatin silver it depends on the period, the history of the world
according to high school dropout, useless archive
of partial things, the poet
was sixteen. the album had just come out. the song
was 7 O’Clock News / Silent Night.
he and his best friend lay side by side
on the floor of the bedroom in brooklyn
in vietnam wave after wave of u.s. troops broke
and broke over the nation they destroyed by the time i was born
the poet was a professor and i was told
to look vets on the streets in the eye when i stepped over their legs,
don’t be afraid my father said, say excuse me, give them change if you have it
he gave me change so i would have it it doesn’t matter what they do
with it, they won’t hurt you he said they’ve done all the hurting they ever
meant to do and then some, this fucking
country my father said this fucking country and its fucking
walking dead remember
being sixteen when the radio
mattered, and the car and the car’s tinny radio
countdown, the weight of the keys, the power
of pressing the gas, of gathering speed, the mastery
of steering, rush of shifting gears, the girl
with red hair, her hand out the window, her cigarette, the wind
blew strands of hair across her face it always got
stuck in her wet n’ wild lipgloss, i hooked my finger
to pull it free of her mouth i always smelled like her
apple drugstore shampoo we sang along to billy joel she would pretend to
sing i would pretend not to notice when her voice would fade out she’d listen
to me catch the low low notes she couldn’t hit
alone
once
her lips against my ear, breath quick, she whispered sing
to me, i like the way the low notes feel
inside so i sang
into her ribs i sang
into the cleft of thigh i sang
it didn’t even matter what i sang
today
the ocean is flung out across the sheets, lifting her body offering herself
to the flagrant sun, beads of light on her skin i can barely remember
the latin declensions or the types of greek columns or the names
of cloud formations until late at night when i least
need them
but the smashed vase of history
is scattered in pieces all over the floor of my
head and every day i walk barefoot across
crouching to fish out stray bits
of what might matter
the poet who did not want to go to war
the vet on the sidewalk who said thank you young man
solemnly to me when i handed him
the nickel i’d been holding in my fist
and i nodded solemnly in return
i wonder
if they played taps at his
funeral, if someone was there
to play taps if someone was there
to take the folded flag
the archive
of every song i’ve ever
sung into someone’s
broken body so it would
hum with the low
low notes they couldn’t hit
alone
