After Hours, Provincetown Cemetery
KENDRA DECOLO
Tonight my dead are restless,
reincarnating themselves
with names like Glissando
and Surreptitious. I want a tree
to be a tree again, not this trick
of light, chaos of muscle curved
into the neck of a violin.
Autumn welds itself
to the seams of August
and we are saddled by its heat,
the heart of silence
smooth as a gun.
You are somewhere
iridescent and unholy,
a sharp horizon of a man,
traveling circus broken
into luminous machinery,
a caravan pounding like horses
along the highway. You,
dog-toothed piano,
Queen whose glittered
lashes eat up the dark.
Your words are thumbprints
on the eyelids of the gods.
Your body is the book
I break into, hijacked
of meaning. Your voice,
ejaculation of moonlight,
your speeding
ticket sex, gold-veined
heart—tonight you are
my only shelter. I inhabit you
like a squatter, burning
my one small light
in this cemetery of thieves.
Tonight my dead are restless,
reincarnating themselves
with names like Glissando
and Surreptitious. I want a tree
to be a tree again, not this trick
of light, chaos of muscle curved
into the neck of a violin.
Autumn welds itself
to the seams of August
and we are saddled by its heat,
the heart of silence
smooth as a gun.
You are somewhere
iridescent and unholy,
a sharp horizon of a man,
traveling circus broken
into luminous machinery,
a caravan pounding like horses
along the highway. You,
dog-toothed piano,
Queen whose glittered
lashes eat up the dark.
Your words are thumbprints
on the eyelids of the gods.
Your body is the book
I break into, hijacked
of meaning. Your voice,
ejaculation of moonlight,
your speeding
ticket sex, gold-veined
heart—tonight you are
my only shelter. I inhabit you
like a squatter, burning
my one small light
in this cemetery of thieves.
Kendra DeColo’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the 2012 Best of the Net Anthology, Vinyl Poetry, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, CALYX, Split This Rock: Poems of Witness and Provocation, Printer’s Devil Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a work-study scholarship from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, residency awards from the Millay Colony and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Kendra is the founding poetry editor of Nashville Review and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
