By BEN MAZER
xv
No mystery if the cats gather as this strange encounter
should have come to have emblematized the city:
for of all those who passed and paid homage to their peer
only you remained, after the room was clear.
We want to remember
our dead, make an altar,
bring our daughter
to the photograph trace a chin
here, for good luck, palm
her grandmother’s hair,
she doesn’t know
who she is yet
Farid says he wants to be a family,
he adds, by which I mean I don’t want you to die.
How did the fall begin? With touch? With naming? You were guidebook, misstep. You were hiking in Japan.
I do not mean to lose the coast. But the fragrant wood of the skiff, shore whining with current, as though I could hear the coil of electric lines humming with speech, the slur of ordering—and in overhearing seek to follow, or move away from, bow knifing the water and splaying it from its back, sound retreating fathoms down from the oar’s dip and dip.
Lucas had to work late, or else.
When he left the office
The stars were open
And the bars were closing.
Lucas took one of those trips
That Americans of a certain rage
Must take—to find themselves. In Utah
Lucas found himself marooned
In the wilderness
How can the one-man band disband?
They say scads of folks cried at his
Scattering
Beyond Furniture & Fixtures,
Fixed Assets incl of Plant
& Machinery, Goodwill incl
Of Green Donation & Tree
Trimming Vehicle
You will only be heard
When the noise
Has died down
And the air so clear
You can hear
The soundless
Soundtrack of bats
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Celebrating 15 Years