D.S. Maolalai

Sylph.

but anyway
there was also
the first time
when I was in love with someone
who I thought also
loved me. her name
was natalie.

and she was skinny.
scottish,
small as dust
and blonde.
like a thing
you'd find
skimming riverbeds
or scampered in a meadow
taking fright at rabbits. 

there was
this whole ethereal
impression from her
and you don't say those words
lightly.

we managed
pretty well
a year
and then a second year
less well. I don't know
what she thought of me,
except
that I wasn't as clever as her
or as progressive. she
was right
on both counts.  

she moved to London
right
before I left
after we split
over long distance. I'm glad we did;
otherwise
I wouldn't have traveled, seen hawks
take down pigeons
from the sky
in illinois. 

wouldn't
have met
the new girl. she's
not ethereal. holding her
is like holding
a rock
and nothing
like grabbing
at shadows.

 Skipping the burial.

two of us lurked
at the back of the church
by the doorway
and she read the thing quite well
with her grandmother
lying there. it was me
and jack baker—both
standing awkwardly
and only knowing the granddaughter,
both at different times
having kissed her
in nightclubs and bars,
drunk and windtossed
like a storm
and flapping bats. we were all
friends now, though we only sometimes
saw each other,
friends in the adult way
and not so much
like that. afterward
we skipped the burial
and walked toward home together. halfway
into finglas
the hearse went by.

I am a vehicle for memory.

pain
in the heart
and the back
and the sternum
crawling through my fingers
and coming out words.

pain
to be made
to be something,
like memory,
the sense of a memory,
the sense
of having things
happen
slowly
in slowed down prose;
purses
and hands
and something
more commonplace than copper. 

I am a man without a fireplace to gaze into.
I am a man who trembles when he hears the door.
I am hands
and eyes
and shoulders.
dimensions,
a stomach that makes noises,
a heart that beats,
elbows
connected to fingers.

the sky is a red orange
peeled back to reveal patterns
and a lime
sliced over dishrags
into soaking.
the world is a shellfish
smiling at the huck
stolen from the sea by something
without it.

 
fluid rises
and something else rises
and something else breathes
while my hands move the keyboard.
apes breathe at the fountain,
the flesh moves
the mind goes away
and poems come out.