Brian, Age 7 (audio only)
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More by this poet
The Embrace
You weren’t well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.
1998
A Green Crab’s Shell
Not, exactly, green: closer to bronze preserved in kind brine, something retrieved from a Greco-Roman wreck, patinated and oddly muscular. We cannot know what his fantastic legs were like— though evidence suggests eight complexly folded scuttling works of armament, crowned by the foreclaws’ gesture of menace and power.
1995
The Owner of the Night
interrogates whoever walks
this shadow-lane, this hour
not reserved for you: who
are you to enter it?
Orion’s head over heels
above the road, jewel-belt
flinting starlight
to fuel two eyes looking
down from the air:
beacons in reverse,
since light pours in
toward her appetite
until she wings her noiseless outline
between our rooftop and the stars,
over this door and all the doors
hidden in the grass:
dreaming voles,
firefly province,
wasps in the palace
they’ve hollowed under the hill.
2017