by Kyle Vaughn
Another gleaming fall rises like glass to
contain another solitude, a bird
following its music into a rhythm against a window,
knocking against invisible limits. Injury can’t
be helped by night’s insufferable gauze.
And where is the entrance to the convalescent ward?
Where is the market for antidotes for a poisoned voice?
Someone holy gives me a word I won’t listen to, one
I’ll hide in a childhood memory of a lost balloon.
I am not who I was. I amputated that boy, left his
limbs to the jaws of a masterless dog.
Learned the artfulness of my own incisors. Bloody mouth,
I could only drink smoke from a porcelain cup, and
my name diminished into a wordless fool.
Found other ways to leave messages, writing
letters in big black script. With a green beer bottle,
I imitated the poem of the drunk,
emerald lines with lost hope about bones.
And there again, silence’s circumference.
What can be said about a lifetime of grief? I cannot
explain the way through disaster, but
I know the look and the meaning of the shore.
It’s why I return to the image of a face, something that’s
divine and quiet and not an edge to collide with.
Kyle Vaughn is the author of Lightning Paths: 75 Poetry Writing Exercises and the co-author/co-photographer of A New Light in Kalighat. Find him here: www.kylevaughn.org; twitter: @krv75; insta: @kylev75; email: kylev75@gmail.com
Emerge Literary Journal 