The streets fill up
with audible snow until the sonar of love leaves us alone. Until the rust of
noon sets us free to tumble these sheets in exhaustion. We pre-dream of peace
only to resume living waking feeling the still-wet blackboard of
youth on all sides but one, the side of dreaming.
Pink in the first
few pages of days as if a name could rightly
saddle what there is to be said in correct longing.
To a nearly deleted
scene – the one on a dusty street, the cul-de-sac of roller skates chomp
through stony days. It’s always some squinting part of the day summer. The leaves slick with
May light and summer almost.
Things a boy can do
and keep from you.
Squirming in the muddy ocean this morning I thought of you far away in
loveland, the ink still wet in the sky.
Soon the first snowflake fell charting meaning. Hard thick branches frame the
sky. It gets worse with the milk of two years feeding the same stream.
The description of
hissing hidden in my timeline, the award light dim and again with you.
To stamp out desire
then relive each broken foil. The cloud updates. We can breathe into the
silence of together peacefully at last.
Steadily paper
became twelve hundred punched holes. A golden outline of a triangle fell onto a
soft blue tracing of a square.
No more ash smeared
in wax. The elastic loose and comfortable. They set out to assemble a softer,
gentler hammer.
Blue in the last few
notes of years as if inflection could misquote dreams…
The empty kitchen
part of summer with leftover citrus and salt. The wet around with thunder and
summer.
Things an idea can
do and keep from you.
Soaked in fog this
morning, I thought of you far away in your own life. I’d have to stop myself from tripping through
these tendencies.
Soon the first
snowflake fell charting meaning. Hard thick branches frame the sky. It gets worse with the milk of two years feeding the same stream.
The description – these amenities and the freedom therein, without
you. These mild peppers. Those bland perfect fruits. These watery tones
themselves already, without inflection.
A wave burning. The
palm leaves under the overpass. The staggering transformation of morning. The productive waste of longing.
This mode of
fractional beliefs. That mode bereft of joy. This mode of parallel harmonies.
The windows filled
with paper. What was the last year – the parade of – ambition of ambition. Desire of desire and so forth. This is an
interesting idea to swim with.
Pointing, I meant
you. No, not you.
Another pinch of
snuff? These days the orange busting – bursting? and the recurrence of dawn associations with “new beginnings” leaning into a pitch. “Stop how?”
Year by year the
warped authority of being flattens in the skillet, rises, then collapses. To
become normal and invert myself and again bloom.
Clipped the air of
worry and let it grow it. Amarillo leaves.
The wolf introduced
by three horns, your name
etched in stone, filled in with snow.
Douglas
Piccinnini is the author
of Blood Oboe (Omnidawn, 2015) and Story Book: a novella (The
Cultural Society, 2015), as well as the chapbooks Soft (The Cultural
Society, 2010), Victoria (Bloof, 2019), The Grave Itself (Ethel,
2021) and most recently, A Western Sky (Greying Ghost, 2022). Recent
poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Afternoon Visitor, Blazing
Stadium, Brooklyn Rail, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly,
Fence, Hot Pink Magazine, Lana Turner, MQR, Opt
West, Prelude, and Volt – among others.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
