gathered in the whiteness beyond.
You hear only the clink of cutlery
and a child crying. There will
be no gunfire, no serrated light.
The cold will be enough, as always.
I
The City
Once we were ten miles outside the city, it
vanished completely. We suspected this
happened from the top down, with television
antennae fading into ether and asphalt
shingles glimmering, like fish scales,
then flecking into nothingness.
For a mere
moment buildings were reduced to rib cage,
people illuminated within the lattice of beams,
bent over ironing boards and countertops,
chopping cucumbers into slender green coins
until they and their knives and even the blade-
scarred board had vanished into empty air.
But there were also those who asserted
buildings softened into something like
sodden cardboard and settled slowly into
themselves. One contingent even claimed
nothing happened at all: the city simply
shifted like a sleeping animal, dreaming
of our return.
We decided to confirm
our top-down theory by hiding a camera
in the woven branches of a linden tree
then climbing into our van and driving
until the city sank into the dusky horizon.
There, someone said, pointing, it’s done it again.
And it was true, the impassive brick and steel
were gone. We cranked a U-turn and rumbled
home over the asphalt we’d just traveled
in hopes of catching our city in the breathless
unclothed moment before she had once again
reassembled herself, down to bits of rusted
hardware on the roadside and the actors
hired to loiter outside of bars.
But this time,
as we coasted slowly into our neighborhood,
past the impostors and hastily reconstructed
but nonetheless convincing details, we smiled
quietly at one another.
The van creaked to a stop under the tree
and we leaned the ladder into its thick crown
when suddenly something lifted
scraping into flight, croaking
like a rusted door—
as if the tree had cracked
open and coughed its dark
and broken
heart into the sky—
At Night
after Simic
at night you might not sense
the old hatreds of the city
which could be anywhere
rain-swept pavement turns
to shining lakes of light
or cars hiss coldly through
brushstroked intersections
the people are stacked away
into vertical burrows filled
with pill bottles and screens
insomniacs lie awake and share
the blank stare of their many
separate ceilings and children
are taught to shoot the deadbolt
upon first returning home
and yet the city wakes each day
and puts on its face and nods
as if it is not a family gathered
around the scrape of cutlery
at a steaming evening meal
pretending grandma never
used scissors on the mailman
and that father did not slip
his hands into his niece’s
blouse just this afternoon
Nowhere
Nothing will happen tonight
on an unknown rain-darkened street
at the door of the Hotel Nowhere.
When the cathedral bells fall silent
you will know it is the moment.
The password is any form of the verb
to be. The ritual will be enacted
by the most reverend Pastor Niemand
and
