The beast shrugged off the black coat
and I wrapped myself in the dark
of the ink of the dog,
like a pen that I wrote
the days on my arm with incase I forgot
how long it’s been
since I felt the drip,
give me the hair of the dog
that gave me such lovely shakes
because it’s been too long
Wrapped around the steel wire of your
Frame, the stain of Chardonnay, four
Four bottles that bent the room, and
Turned us out and the purple plume, hand
Over hand, four in hand, crooked knot
That pulls my seams in line but not
In sync, they’re jumbled scattered skittered
And the ice drip that bloomed from our
Limbs, limbing, limping, like cherries bittered
In the jars of liquor my dad kept on the satin wood
Assembled with His hands and stood
To hold the fruits above the head
In the memory of rooms I once said
Were my own, my home, a stone of a place
I keep in my jacket pocket
And feel the weight, iron locket
Tugging the cloth from my chest
To separate, peel back the past, what’s left
Behind is the Now, but I’m not in this
Moment, am I, thoughts vaporing, kettle hiss
And you say you’re sorry for the stain
You left on the shirt, like there’s a shame
In it, but there’s none, lover, friend
Because the redness brings me back
To those cherries, in their jars,
And for a moment I can
Occupy the ghost of those rooms again
Raise plow
It’s a sign I see
Every time I’m drunk and passing
Through St. Marks
And I try to picture the snow mounting,
The ice expanding into the vacant cracks and
Smothering the already narrow throat
Of a street choking on its history
I’m one of the atoms spread thin over this street
Where Giants have howled to rebel moons
And forty years ago you could smell the revolution
In the sweat and thick clouds
Of smokes and songs
Coalescing into a snow of itself
That lined the streets in heavy piles
Raise your plow
You, machine
And leave it be
To the shapeless murmurings
And scattered thoughts of who I was
Just a year ago
When I was whole
And though I wasn’t always happy
I was happy
Because when I try to fathom where I’d be forty years ago
It strikes me,
A pillar of furnace flamed steel,
That my small murmurs are all the street of my throat of my skull has room for
So carry on, machine
Raise the plow
Matt Cavagnero 