An eclipse shapes overlapping shadows that soften each shadow's fragmented edge in a tendriled silver maple named grandpa. Crows chatter on grandpa's arms, and moths soft-winged and covered with dust, gather. I wanted a newer and brighter light so you tightened the dry fire coil and split a white ash and set it on fire you fused the transformer with pear-shaped brass and made lightning from a dome of sky directing asteroids toward the river we said this would be our crystal life gathering in the upper atmosphere propped up with the songs of wooden sparrows The annelids rise with the sun, like a metal fabricator seals the hour with sparks. A string of tin beads. The droning church organ the children can't hear. The Chickadee warming herself in hair clippings and landscaper's fabric. The snaps of the August corn and nightshade. The fire that first refuses. And at sunset, we siphon the tea into its porcelain amphora. We dust its surface with gold leaf and pour it over glassine to soften. Is it my breath or a ghost crying the true blackness of a lunar eclipse? How far must I follow this delicate thread through the dark? I find my grandfather's draft card and seal his shirt in plastic. The rash moves from my arm to my breastbone to my temples marked with sleep. My mother remembers a rowhouse on forty-seventh avenue. Esther was very elegant, she says. The glasses have a purple film and weightless skin; stubble's in the razor cartridge sealed in plastic. At night, I don't see as well. The streetlights are shaped like stars. |
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