Two Poems in Conversation

the sun breaks

(like a line in a poem waiting to be written)

through shy rain & cloud blanket

apologies seep through floor mats

soaking into the road behind us

your hands at eleven & five

(by now a familiar angle)

for a minute the world is backwards

the salt river sign is a cell phone tower is

on the right not on the left is

heading north not heading south &

you see before i do

& it balances the world

(i saw it once, you saw it twice)

a strip of grass

a roadblock chained

& we have not yet

fetched the bolt cutters, though

(we will, we will)

a two-track off the side

out of view of passing eyes

our picnic forgotten in the car

marching through salt river park

burrs in the tears of jeans i bought to follow

you, thematically appropriate &

quickly thumbed off

a trek there & back & there again

roadblock bending beneath brave hands

legs swinging over like saddling a horse

(if the beast were the growth

of a decaying wonder)

rotting wood & metal sheets

each creak a secret saying

you don’t have to die if you don’t wanna die

the rusted reminder of a mark we didn’t leave

streamers littered in abandoned corners

the carnival man leaning against

a wall you hadn’t turned toward

holes in the roof playing circus mirror tricks

if i need you to guide my steps

it’s because we know your balance

can be trusted & if i drag

burrs from your hair

we know a poem is coming &

if this is the poem

(it’s not the only one)

it’s you in the mirror

& if the mirror is dusted

one line of love will be washed away &

we won’t have to cry if we don’t wanna cry

if it all caves in we’ll see the ruins

& sort the pictures

& keep the memories

of nostalgia that never belonged to us

the michaelmas daisies look the same

in macomb as they do in benzie. here,

they’re sprouting out of rusted barrels,

but this uneven grassy expanse and

the lure of the caved-in doors

shows me there’s a chance for

the same kind of rural peace here.

our boots crunch broken glass and

i know a song about moving fast* that

speaks of searching for a reflection

of emotional bids or maybe just

curiosity, mirrored—

not these see-through fragments that

separate.

we talk about time so much but i run.

and we both ran with our words, so fast that i forget every day that we can’t even walk yet in human years. i don’t see any running water, but i think we’ve both cried enough in the last twenty-six seasonal rotations as to fill a river with salt. i’ve never settled down in an abandoned place before. only been on the move, awe and breathless capturing propelling me through musty space. i’ve sat on too many picnic tables that have caved in even though they look sturdy. now this one has roots growing snarled around its legs and still, it holds us.

these buildings could’ve died but

they didn’t. they could’ve wanted to,

but they didn’t.** i’m no longer talking

about buildings. this is a place

of hallucinatory mourning.***

a place of unrealized nostalgia.

place of rusted confetti and warnings

to those who dare perform

or walk a tightrope of rotting wood.

a butterfly wing made from false tin

shines orange in my manufactured light.

you let me guide you across the tightrope,

hands warmer than a closed door.

it’s like a jungle of dusk.

grasses thrice your height.

our false leather boots gleaming

with evening dew. lover boy

on the concrete, lover girl

in the dust. under two different roofs.

the graffiti artists designed it this way.

so i have a carabiner on my keys

and you don’t. and sometimes i think

i don’t belong anywhere but someplace like this—

abandoned—

rubbing a tender cobweb from my arm,

trying to calm my racing heart

at every unknown sound, or balancing

on corrugated metal, alone.

but your film is in my pockets

and the flickering lights are multiplying

in the grainy velvet dark; diminishing

when we tilt our necks to the sky.

you bought jeans just so you could

follow me. there is no body

in the freezer, just a word

misleading, just ours, alive,

feeling all wrong, sometimes.

i find tiny burrs stuck in my hair and let you gently tug them loose; you let them fall to the tangled grass. you did this on your couch this morning and you did this with your silence last month.

i can see alternate history: you, here,

as a child, the boys and your mother,

some temporary joy. i could steal

the green brocade under the shreds

of barstools, make something of it.

but i am already too contaminated

by mold. the burnt-out lamp above

the gaping maw of a door—it looks like

an old glass jar. no amount of rest will

remind it of illumination. not so for us.

we’ll be published together again and

maybe everything is just thematically

appropriate. i open my fist. a burr falls out.

hanif said there’s always this year.

but you said, there’s always next year.

when we reverse clumsily over the grass,

i don’t even feel deflation, or grasping for how

we didn’t walk out front to capture

the faded sign. i glimpsed a roof

through the trees, but we said

come back, and i think i will trust

that this isn’t just a trick of the light.

* “Hunter,” Jess Williamson↩

** “Alibi,” Hurray for the Riff Raff ↩

*** The Mighty Red, Louise Erdrich ↩