We Be Ludere
The root-tune of our being being this nightsweltering in the boybunks.
Owl-absonant sensesurround of sweatshine and moonklieg insomnia both.
The mustangy (shin-shank) clash of us hopped-up spiral-eyed on sun-tea and the sugars.
« en garde your ownself you I could kill you again easy »
Unsweet unsmotherable systole-diastole (and back again) (and so forth)
of the instigator v. the aggravoked; unbridleable-arterial
brotherbeat
of kick-poke (and pester-choke and parry) play at play.
Copyright © 2025 by Atsuro Riley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Once upon a time I lived surrounded by brothers—blood-born ones and others who were not.
Now that they’ve all gone, I’ve been trying to tune myself to the memory of them, straining to hear them (and me) again at vivid play.
I want the key of their wild note (to paraphrase George Meredith’s ‘The Lark Ascending’).
The racket in this song will have to do.”
—Atsuro Riley
Atsuro Riley
Atsuro Riley is the author of Heard-Hoard (University of Chicago Press, 2021), winner of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, a finalist for PEN America’s Voelcker Poetry Award, a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year, and a Bookworm Top Ten Book of the Year. His 2010 book Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press) received the Whiting Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, The Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress.