Only sad things,
like: the tea is not
coffee. Silence
arrives, sudden
as mail. Only magic
things, like: if
you’d only say so…
(You: say so.)
How feeling is
‘the useless cry
of a bird’ /
a sort of
nowhere including
everywhere.
Each song the choir
sings sounds like
the end of service.
Enter the city:
delivery trucks
drag concrete over
cobbles, over
curbs where I
wander with my
gigantic dome umbrella,
alive as in a
tenancy to silence.
Rocks stacked on
stovepipes. Windows:
debts I pay
again and again.
The rain has no
idea –
YOU CAN’T IMPLY LIGHT
Tiny city on the inside
of an ember: model for
that other city, memory.
Conversations we pass,
like beliefs, down through
generations.
An orange in frosty grass, rotting slowly.
So cold I’d steal my brother’s clothes, so quiet
I hear the dim electric crackling of power lines,
headed who knows where.
Whatever disappears
becomes a mirror.
Still talking
about the world
though it vanishes.
In the distance,
graceful skater.
City of pigeons frozen in fountains at night, singing:
What finally
our lives must
correspond to,
the sky –
Shadows even in darkness.
Snow: the great equal.
No two stillnesses alike.
NOT THE WORLD ENTIRE
Nothing changed: it ached away.
You cried all night last night
about your dreams. Under
ether, sound elongates, bells
like tulip bulbs. I am
easily broken, or moved.
I spoke today with a man
who no longer speaks.
We walked around defying.
Winter: cat past lit
doorway. Sunlight:
counterfeit. Journey
begins in winter as
despair. The city contains
a second, sleeping city
where, stranded near
the bakery, we buy it
entire. There are days
for an old-fashioned
silk-lined suit; days for
vanishing. Approaching
the new city in conversation,
we catch a coming hymn
and fall silent. Together
we enter the bright gymnasium.
Andy Stallings lives in New Orleans, where he teaches creative writing at Tulane University, co-edits Thermos Magazine, and curates Exploding Swan Operations. His poems have appeared or will soon appear in Mid-American Review, Bat City Review, Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, Hubbub, and Clementine Magazine.