THE WEDDING

There is a man here, present in subtraction,

in the whispers of airplane wreckage,

the coils of Alaskan frost—and in the spark

of his son’s sad eyes, who’s space is filled

with a painful chorus of your father

would be so proud.

Every Pride drives deeper, edging

those sad eyes somewhere else,

sealing flush the gap

that should be filled with the squint

of his eyes—the bounce of his laughter—

the pressed white shirt

ruined red with wine—

Pride steals the place of everything:

his crackling skin—his quiet musk—

the weight of his hand

warming my shoulder.     

THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT WATCHES FIELD HOCKEY

She loves the spittle and uneven grass of hockey on the mall the same way

she loves the curling clouds lapping around her neck, as the heat dips 

orange and crimson, and for a moment, she watches us:

how swampy our shirt-necks must feel and how boring it must be,

that we rarely think about the shadow lengthening across our field,

rifling passes to each other over the uneven grass. 

They only play in that spectacular sliver of evening, she says,

the moment that knows how it feels to look up at me, in a passing way,

and say: I've forgotten how beautiful living feels

and how incredible it is to sweat

under that shifting shadow, like the Egyptian must have,

forgetting how unique and monstrous

that pyramid was, as he took his stick in his hands and used it

to strike a round rock with all the precision

his eternal soul could muster.