February 6th, 2015

I Could Hear the Water at the Edge of All Things, Hammok, Oblivion Hymns

On Teaching in A Broken Place
after Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End
for Beslan, for Hartford

The cold collects in the empty seats
the window left open

no one tending to the plant
which has been cut with scissors

and the paper is nearly gone.

Their dismembered hands flutter
around the room

to the low rattling of vents.

When we left the city his mother says
from the hissing wind she has become

we forged a home of Serbian
folk songs and cans of soup

and carried it on our backs until 
the weather changed. 

We left our forwarding address 
but no mail ever came.

4 pennies will get you all
around the world and back he says

The sky breaks in the shape of birds

and the last of the rain softens earth
who long ago withdrew her arms.

He is scared they say. The black smoke
is everywhere. He wants a home, they say.

He feels safe with his mother, they say
even if she is made of air.

The coats are for protection they say
but their arms too weak to wear them!

There are ghosts who come to whisper at the
window pane - they are trying to hold their

pencils without any bones. At least we have 
our bones and even still the cartilage, I say.

A heart beats against the tile.
It glistens and ticks like a fish on land.