Storm Toward Morning. Malachi Black

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 by the weather,

      have 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 СКАЧАТЬ