Selected from the book, Moongarden by Anthony McCann

 

Moongarden (November) 


On the eve of the wedding
         the witch arrived in the city
   
      the great lawn

plunged
            into dark
and silent pleasure

In the public forest 

a man 
entered the body 

of a stranger

When it happened
his eyes were closed

his right hand blooms

in cold November

night cars

are converted
into light

In the distance:

    recorded sounds
of ventilation

and the sea

There is no damage
to the liquid

while you sleep

the earth leaks
cold traffic 

onto the street


And the city?
    
What did the city do?

It made happiness 
    and codes

in the windows underground


I left my voice 
inside your body

when I drowned



Ode to the Sky


It was the color that lived in a horse--
An epidemic of lost rocks.

Then the sun came and struck the rocks
And I stood with the others and I looked at the sky

To which one cloud was pinned
Because the sky and its color are things.

This is the history of that weather.
It’s an ode to schizophrenia.

O, Schizophrenia, it says,
You are like the weather--

A coincidence of symptoms
And the name of The Disease.

In the shade of that obscenity
I pretend to be a tree,

A practitioner of Human Studies
And all the other science, because

This is what my limbs are for:
To make these circles in the grass.

This is what my lips are for:
Replacing all the words.



F train to Avenue X


From Fort Hamilton Parkway
All the way to Avenue X
Fatherhood reduces Brooklyn to pure geometry
At 18th Avenue and again, here, at Avenue P
Only the dead know Fatherhood
Gathered at the window, counting beads of light
Fatherhood is the last warm thing in your hands
I have to say something about Fatherhood:
Fatherhood replaces England
So that no one may look into it
So that no one may hold it up to the sky
All the way to Gravesend, last night I rode the F
Fatherhood rode by the window
I took the F train back to jail

 

 

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