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All the while he talks to
the boy, their son, on the phone,
she is interrupting, telling him something
to say, not to say, indicating
that she needs to talk to the boy
herself. Rather than dampening
her enthusiasm or trying
to listen to both at once, finally
he hands her the phone. And rather
than resentment, what he feels
inside himself is the primordial
upwelling of tenderness.
Copyright © Forrest Gander. Used with permission of the author.
Green spring grass on
the hills had cured
by June and by July
An olivine moon. The sum of what
he knows of her is balanced
on what he doesn’t know.
Came home early and caught her
singing in the shower.
His insides stirred as though, for lunch,
he’d eaten sardines and a parrot.
The covenant and affirmation of being
his beloved’s beloved.
But the true explanation of an intimacy
is the duration of that intimacy.
Like an evening coming alive
with fireflies, he feels himself
pulsing from vivid amber to green.
In the city, a weather of zeros-and-ones
cascades through rising static, while here
in this xeric topography, we fold ourselves
into the circumstance of desert foothills
chewed away by leprosies, toothed winds, and
sudden rains. Will you let me
approach you? Bend forward