Domestic issue, those little fires
fed carefully in the yard
by mothers or grandmothers:
sentinels, furies, not one

of the immortals and yet
they watched to tamp
the headstrong flame,
conscripting fire

to interrupt the process,
consume the rot that creeps,
threatens to take hold
of the green and growing.

But there’s a cost to this
sort of tending, of waging
constant war against decline
which wants to have

its way, always—
Leave it alone a second,
turn aside; believe in its warm
disguises, and quickly rue.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

If somewhere a hand snaps a cloth around the mouth, tightens a blindfold, tucks the glistening, form-fitting spandex around the body, checks the buckles of its expensive shoes.

If the moth trembles in the eaves, it is for every story lived that someone else appropriates: reconstitutes with plastic, fiberfill; turns into amuse-bouches.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The maw of that which will devour us all,
that gapes beyond apartments and old strip malls;
the rusted iron gates over which the neighbor’s ivy creeps,

unpeopled mansions built
on mountaintops exposed, tracts of sand
over which armies of boots grind children’s bones

to dust— And why not empty
all the vessels of the throat,
the glittering receptacles of blood;

and why not break
the hundred glasses in the room
with the sharpest facets of that joy,

that long-lost twin of sorrow?
Hurry through one more refrain, as if it were
the thread in the labyrinth that could save you.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In the summer,
in the first shallow drifts of autumn,
in the terrible seasons of rotting fruit
when we rush to embalm their sugar in pastry—

Where the assassin bug skates lightly,
where the deer have gone into the thorn,
where the wildness loves what’s
hidden, without shame—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Streets turn into rivers,
rivers push past front doors,
enter through garages and mews.

At such times, a boat or kayak
comes in handy. So when they read
the news about the imminence of ice

melting far up north,
at the pole, the locals shrug:
the whole planet’s self-winding.

The clock’s set to alarm. Come
shuck an oyster, raise a glass
topped off with foam.

We’ll all put our bones to bed one
way or another— salt marsh,
wet clay, turf, ocean floor.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

supple gold, the stippled
giving way to austere cold—
so listen harder for the call

of all you thought was lost or perished,
familiars finding their way back through
stations in the half-lit wood.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

perhaps I’ll see
your ink again, God-sped,
before darkness falls.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

There are words and there are words, for sometime in the past
someone must have seen a white snakeroot glowing in the meadow,
a seed burst into flower or shrivel into dust; or heard
the tinny orchestra of tree crickets warming up at dusk,
oily bassoon of frogs in the river’s sludge-filled mouth
which must have moved him to work his lips into a shape

mimicking their sound, yet every sound he made
was always shadow— And is this why we want to throw
ourselves at the elusive, burrow into the music: press the wrists,
the fingers of the hand into the board; draw the bow’s whole length
across the string as if by quivering, it’s possible to leach
more of the quickly fading summer light we love?

~ впиватьса (vpivatsia)

For Pavel Ilyashov

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.