What's the point of heading south—My dead friends:
Rafael Pérez Estrada, Vicente Núñez, Rafael Medina...; Pablo Garcia Baena and Jose de Miguel
have returned to their native Córdoba, nothing is the same

Light break detected, radiating
erratic likeness meant as morning, or
the saying of it, new day, this simple acceptance

Here, we mee we sprawl
East to Kyoto to home
once we pass this gate.

Not the one that is gone
Perhaps the one coming
And as dreams burst seams

all writing is isn’t it
a game
of disappearances

I was small.
It would’ve taken my entire life
to traverse the days dividing us.

Near the end of the hours, the background is the yellow forest of the painting; a day on which deer, and all else that is born and will one day die, are bound by an impossible connection. Two days prior, they learn how to pray: if what crowns the sky is a root, then I believe. Two days later, they sit in the sun, in a frame of white light, where the idea of the sky lies beneath their feet.

To become a boy was not so expensive
When disrobing, my lover did not gaze with pleasure at the slight curve of my hip
When fucking, I did not float to the walls and watch from afar

Plato talks
about his hands,
how good, so virtual,

Lists make the world into something
graspable
solitude

Stranger, this is spring in my village:
from the very start, the east wind has opened every enclosure,
occupying each street corner and patio,
moving through the village locust trees to the fields beyond.

Too many voices, they puddle in the ear and the megaphone
stalks. The water’s cloudy, so much lost, sunk, floating,
turns into phone data parasite bacteria. The intricate road looks full
of intersections that form the wrinkles on your face.

My epitaph is a wild plant that grows
in the kingdom of sadness and regret—
A smile slinks past like a fox
and is lost among gray stones.

Everything is behind a chain linked fence and I think I might have tennis elbow. I’ve trained for this my whole life and now here we are with no words in the night sky. They fly to the moon to recharge, before dusk, especially in December. Christmas carolers are practicing Jingo Bells in their driveways and the clouds are about to pop. Glitter will get everywhere, but hopefully not in our exhaust pipes. I can see this beautiful mess when I close my eyes and listen to you reading on the other side of the tulips. I didn’t think your voice would get through, but the ground is still soft. Now that I am getting to know your absence it’s easier to describe the texture of sound, real or imagined. It’s like holding the moon in one hand and memorizing it with the other. Haven’t you responded to the moon before you served it on a fat slice of wheat bread? (Here’s the recipe: heat du jour, filtered water, cultured wheat, sea salt, whole grain einkorn.)

We wore white hats and tights, colorful buttons
preventing the wind from undoing our clothes.
Somebody blew into a wooden tube. Another slapped

Muse of my ancestors, tell me how the plowman,
grabbing the crooked horns of his plow,
tears the barren breast of the earth;

Doa
To the devoted
My Lord

If crossing Dionysian boundaries is true poetry, then no one makes the poetry demon swoon like Douglas Kearney does. Kearney is a star-studded poet, performer, and librettist. Accolades include a Whiting Award and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Rauschenberg Foundation. Kearney has published six collections, including Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), Someone Took They Tongues (Subito, 2016), and Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press 2015). His latest poetry collection, Sho (Wave Books, April 2021), provides a kaleidoscope of splintered selves and voices. In Sho, the speakers of Kearney’s poems are at once the antagonistic tricksters who enchant you (“I aspire to be a CVS: Lord”) and at once the documenters of historical and current wrongs (“Black wench! Clipped finches’/ shrill in brass lattice.”)

A leaf placed upon the vase
lost from leaves. I turn
the corner to a thudding car lost
in the blank street of soft pleats.
Lost in shedded winter down.

I pricked her lips with the pin
she remained anesthetized
sleeping at my father’s side