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
She stood in the shadow of a monolith, all of her potential looming over her, and she watched her dreams deliquesce into flickering shadows and murmurs. Her feet would never touch the stage of Lincoln Center, she would never see her name in The New Yorker. The future had rushed past her, leaving her behind, bloodied leg in the road. She was ghosting on an LED screen, a shadow of the past chasing the future.
We step out from St. Marks Church, a balloon animal pops, a child shrieks.
“How was it,” she asks. You were perfect, I say, it was great. I’ll relive this moment again and again. She grips my arm tighter. I’m not sure where we’re walking, but we’re moving east, towards the river.
Do you remember those opening bands, I ask her, when we went to Coney Island?
We walk along the East River, lights casting down from the Williamsburg Bridge, skittering across the dark ripples. We pause at a bench so she can rest her leg. She massages her shin and I see the raised purple scar beneath her jeans in my head.
When I was eight I built a four foot tall Lego replica of the North Tower, cementing each plastic brick in place with a mortar of Gorilla Glue, terrified that a careless limb would knock the whole thing down and spill the dream of it across the floor.
****
I adjusted my grip to a new spot on the subway beam, fingers seeking the cold side of the metallic pillow. I watched the carousel of lights, sickly green and fluorescent orange whir past the window. Watched the doors rattle in their place, remembered to mind the gap. I looked at Arianna and followed her long limbs to the dried-gum-and-piss floors. Her olive-skin was made a patchwork of the green and orange light that trickled inconsistently into the car as we flew past the fields of girders. Her arm muscles tensed as she clutched her duffle bag, lean strips of trained fibers. Her body was functional, her posture effortless, precise. I liked to watch her stretch before and after her shows, uncoiling the tension in her limbs, preparing them to move in ways that laughed at gravity and conformity and then cooing them like a mother after the fact.
I felt unnatural in my seat as I watched her on the stage. Lazy limbs sinking into the cushions and falling at my sides, heavy and useless, pendulums laid to rest without a fulcrum to swing their great swoops from. These silent beasts are hard to bear.
Matt Cavagnero 