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We drank hard water.
Spoke in plain language.
Said what we didn't
with a joke or a look.
One went missing—
let silence drill its hole.
A second fell ill.
We cloaked our mirrors.
Slashed a red X
on the door to our house.
Pass over us, I asked
the raven sky,
or burn in me
a second mouth.
From How To Catch a Falling Knife by Daniel Johnson. Copyright © 2010 by Daniel Johnson. Used by permission of Alice James. All rights reserved.
Rockets concuss. Guns rattle off. Dogs in a public square feed on dead horses. I don’t know, Jim, where you are. When did you last see birds? The winter sky in Boston is gray with flu. Newspapers, senators, friends, even your mom on Good Morning America— no one knows where you are. It’s night, cold and bruised, where you are. Plastic twine binds your hands.