Poem For Percival Lowell
by Brad Trumpfheller
From the darkening window, I can see
that the world is filled with terrible things:
dark chapels, an odd number of knees
tongued bloody, fathers in their fatigues,
telescopes dotting the horizon like universes.
When you look through these collapsible eyes,
you turn inside out, into a planet, unkempt
with wild irises. I think the body is a purpling ode
to astronomy. Dear God, what do you see
when you see inside of me? My desires
have quickened like two boys biking down a hill
to play their nightly game of soft miracles:
bruisewater, spit-soaked flower, irises between
the lips & tucked behind the ears –
there is an obsession here, yes, with obsession.
Once, in a sycamore, I was beautiful.
There was no one to see me. I like to imagine
that I understand the world as what it is not.
A garden overgrown with filthy weeds. Small
universe emptied like a cup of water, or an eye.
No. Forgive me, I was wrong. The body
is not an ode, it is a planet to be seen,
not touched,
from the wrong end of a telescope.
My eyes are the space around my eyes:
at once open & opening, forever, faultlessly.
that the world is filled with terrible things:
dark chapels, an odd number of knees
tongued bloody, fathers in their fatigues,
telescopes dotting the horizon like universes.
When you look through these collapsible eyes,
you turn inside out, into a planet, unkempt
with wild irises. I think the body is a purpling ode
to astronomy. Dear God, what do you see
when you see inside of me? My desires
have quickened like two boys biking down a hill
to play their nightly game of soft miracles:
bruisewater, spit-soaked flower, irises between
the lips & tucked behind the ears –
there is an obsession here, yes, with obsession.
Once, in a sycamore, I was beautiful.
There was no one to see me. I like to imagine
that I understand the world as what it is not.
A garden overgrown with filthy weeds. Small
universe emptied like a cup of water, or an eye.
No. Forgive me, I was wrong. The body
is not an ode, it is a planet to be seen,
not touched,
from the wrong end of a telescope.
My eyes are the space around my eyes:
at once open & opening, forever, faultlessly.
Brad Trumpfheller is an undergraduate student at Emerson College. Their writing has appeared in Winter Tangerine, the Nashville Review, Assaracus, and elsewhere.