Say Himalaya
Say you are a brick. With your eyes say, The Biscuit
of Loneliness, and it will be true. Say mortar
and be stacked among other loneliness.
Say crustacean and be encased. Say fathom. You
are left leagues deep. Wherever you’re not, a flock
of swallows schools like fish. They move like a mind.
They think bird and become. Spaces between
are synapse and static. Sky is only something
to believe in. A place we go when we die
and become blue memory. Say sun,
but never look up. Say galaxy. Say breath and try
to breathe the oceans in. The seabed. Continents.
Say Himalaya. Stand there. Reach to grasp the skin
of space pierced with rings. Touch it.
Say empty, and slip inside.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Evangeline, What I Really Meant Was
But there are pinions in our soul
pockets, fishhooked to the daily trudge.
You and me of skin and bone, rivers of flesh
in the city’s clamorous bed. Are we strong enough.
Do our dark looks hide the fingerlings swimming
hazel-green against the currents of our eyes? Evangeline,
you never speak. When you look, you look into
and through. Like spears. Knives to my love balloon.
First frosts piercing the peaceful valley. Down here,
I’m stranded with chopsticks
under the frozen river, chiseling. The cold brain fish
want me as their own, my mind of
wormholes. There must be worms, they intuit,
at least the idea of regeneration. They nibble in
tight packs. They’re thinking of what it would take.
My chiseling is a gesture to the kind warm arms
of death. Come to the edge of the bridge, Eve. Look
right through my boneswell. The fish
are gathering there on the riverbed in the shape
of a spiraling shadow of me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Incredible Story!
Again the snowplows!
From nowhere bear down!
And roll us up Pleasant Street!
To leave us alone!
Together at the movies!
The Spanish ones that make sense!
Oh our unbelievable sins!
We’ve all lost fingers!
To frostbite!
Arrange them as friends!
Along armrests!
As cellos suggest!
A drawn-out death scene!
We kiss them!
In the dark parts!
And pray!
They outlive us!
We’d like to say!
We never!
Knew solitude!
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Andrew Michael Roberts is the author of Give Up, a chapbook from Tarpaulin Sky Press. Recent work appears in Tin House, The Iowa Review, LIT, Gulf Coast, and Mississippi Review.