zafusy

Melt

Even under lens their piles aligned
to the larger idea of some fool’s mask. Scattered,
hare and hole, enough rent their own to stand down a cloaked dove.

More and more were timid stone
and most captained their own wilt, like the heat might
any sturdy green. So we have a pile of ungems, brailling their way across

flows murked into what used to be.
Hold out the tightnets, brothers. See what catch
you’ve made of these hovelers. Unless and until, unless and until,

they will outgain through four
and throw caution like a hurling stick no one
with any growl would dare fetch. We’ve turned them daisy and nothing

roused under the question, backsides
red with slap the recoil enough for a Grade 6 blush
while our own peddlers whistle peace into false caverns we merge with.

 Scott Hartwich

Weaving Wreaths Against the Weather

Soft to the overwave. Real words have interfered as martens to a nest.
What pales them, standing in their tall boots, so clever against
the angles that were tried.

Crisp in the Fall, we’ve compounded all there was with our slow takes
and now we are turned up, watching you young ascend,
the wires like garrotes,

we are begging now. So simple in our plan. Take hands to assemble
the arch between quaints in its curved precocity.
We were clapping then,

Assured the driest snow would not build up where we floundered
and yet melts weren’t eyed differently, or should.
Come to this holding.

We are like to felt and wage tears again. We will pin arms and salt
with the same flurry we used for dragging
our bills with holes

where the heads were, our thick cloaks ripped to include, walking light
among your soft folds weaned to the weather,
you agents of the chilled flight.

Were We When Young
 
The sky had substance, like something you swim through. Lookeyes in every pocket marked Mollies without a single crossed finger. There were parties on the blocks and the bluemen joined in, almost the past, almost, but no one brought out the trumpets or rode crest in fits of sane. This alone pushed away the roasting: singlets of ice wafting armward—mingled breaths rallying, until the whole night put on a cracked face.

If you pinned back your ears you could hear the uprush and the way live greens turned aware of leaf and vein, blushing. You could pocket the eye and use it for dress, even as it turned and searched. All the grays and flats fell from the guarding and we were rock-happy and were flinging palette into the open mouth of the mountain.

We heard the knell ticking and clapped against it until the half-life of seconds opened the longnight boundary. We quelled droplets into sere until hazelight came in pinks, until hands rose over the fumes we’d forgotten and stroked clearer heads into the quickcalm and we were leveled again, pulling fads of color from a most distant valley grayed into the pinpricks of our weakest imaginings.

Scott Hartwich