How He Loved Them

How much the colonel loved his granddaughters
you will never know.
    Their laughter filled his black Mercedes
the way a flock of starlings might fill a single tree
with song.
  What he'd had to do that day, he'd done
with a troubled heart,
    but now their laughter overwhelmed him
with such inarticulable love
      he could hardly
contain it
  and neither could the empathetic little bomb
in the engine,
    which chose that moment
to burst through the hood with self-obliterating joy.

* * *

And the Mercedes burned in front of the courthouse.
And the black smoke billowed and rose like a heart full of love.
And the colonel rose, too,
  like burning newspaper
caught in the wind,
  a scrap of soot, then nothing, then unknowable —

* * *

You will never know
  what dying is like.
The colonel's granddaughters are still laughing in the backseat,
or they are uncomfortable in the new bodies
the bomb made for them.
Oh, darling, darling, one of them recalled,
you are burning up
  with fever — her mother's cool hand on her forehead,
then the sense of slipping under,
    into black sleep. She's asleep now,
the voice said, turning out the light,
      closing the door.

* * *

And in every hand, smartphones made footage
of their bodies,
  the heaps and twists of metal.
The smoke uploaded the wreckage
    to the screenlike sky
where it goes on burning forever —
You will never know if dying is like that,
the same scenes repeated across a larger mind
      than yours —

* * *

Is it like a small girl with a high fever asleep in a dark room
recollected for a moment
    as the brain closes down?
She's asleep, the voices say, she's resting.
(My fleeting one, my obliterated device, my bit of pixilated
soot.) Hit Pause
  and the smoke stops: a black pillar
that weighs the wreckage down.
    Then Play —
how much he loved them.
    unknowable —

* * *

What the colonel had done that day
    had troubled his heart,
but the sound of his granddaughters' laughter
lifted him high into the air
  like a scrap of burning paper
blown from the street into the trees.


Ars Poetica

I slept in a far-away tent, I slept in a hollow log, then I slept in a crate
abandoned in the snow,

I built my shelter from garbage and branches, I slept in the truckyard's
pile of tires, I slogged through the marsh, upsetting the herons —

before I knew you, I owned a gun, before I knew you, I kept a sparrow in
a shoebox, I fed it ham and held it to my head to hear it sing,

I called it a radio, it kept the blues away, I called it love and wrote down
all the words,

I loved sad songs and I carried a gun before I knew you, and, Lord, when
they shipped me here,

I roamed hotel hallways dazzle-eyed and strange, I pushed a cart full of
towels, gun-in-my-pocket,

I made the beds, I missed my friends, I missed my crate, my pile of tires,
I had such friends

before they shipped me here, Lord, Tampa, Cincinnati, Sparks, ear to my
radio,

I am old and wounded in the thigh, I listen to the ice machine's clinking
thoughts, I push my cart

while the planes take off, low and thundering toward the distant edge,
Lord,

there's no gun in my hand, it's a box of notes, a simple record of my
time.


After You Have Gone

The little red jewel in the bottom of your wineglass
is so lovely I cannot rinse it out,

so I go into the cool and grassy air to smoke.
Which one is your warmly lit house

past which soldiers no longer march?
When you reached across the table to touch my hand

is not attainable. I cannot re-capture it.

And no gunners lean on their artillery at the city's edge,
looking this direction,

having shot the sky full of bright holes.

The light bleeds from them.
Long ago, they captured our city

and now they are our neighbors,
going about their business as if they were one of us.

Soon, like you, they will be asleep,
having washed the dishes and turned out the kitchen lights.

When I inhale, smoke occupies me.
When I exhale —

By morning the wine in the bottom of your glass
will have clotted.

I'm sorry I called it a jewel.
It's not the soldiers who have shot me full of holes.

It's not light that pours out.
Love did this.

I was filled with wine.
Now I'm drained of it.


Black Woods

Do you know where our child has gone?
I'm sorry. Do you know what has become
of him? I'm sorry. [.] Is he hiding
in a closet? No. Is he crouched among
the shoes? No. [.] Should we look
in the closets? He's not in the closets. [.]
Should we check the empty boxes? He's not
in the empty boxes. It's very cold out. [.]
Probably he's hiding behind the couch.
Come out, come out! I will count to ten.
One, two, three — He's not behind the couch.
[.] It's very cold out. [.] Probably
he's playing a trick. It isn't a trick. He's probably
hiding above the ceiling tiles. Hello up there!
He's not in the ceiling. [.] It's very cold out.
[.] Did he go out? No. Was he wearing
a jacket? No. Was he wearing boots
and a hat? [.] It's just black woods
out there. [.] Did you give him your jacket?
[.] Did you offer him your jacket? [.]
Maybe he's in disguise. Disguise? In your hat
and jacket. Disguised? [.] Disguised
as you. [.] Did he climb through your window?
Listen to yourself. Did he step inside you?
Listen to yourself. Is he trapped inside you?
Let go of me. Is it black woods in there?


Chandler Brossard

When I was...