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Jonathan Witte Jan 2017
Here I am in the yard again,
shovel in one hand, plastic
bag in the other, trudging
toward the fence in my slippers,
determined to not feel squeamish.

The dog has been scolded
and brought into the house;
she whimpers at the back
window, watching my progress
across a quarter-acre of dormant
grass dusted with morning snow.

Up close, fixed by death,
the squirrel bares its teeth,
white and sharp, its eyes
the size of juniper berries.

I tilt it into the bag,
blood smearing
the rusted shovel,
and turn back, surprised
by the heft of lifelessness,
how dead weight pulls
a broken body down.

Gravity, it occurs to me,
is a relentless undertaker.

I walk and the bag swings
like a soft pendulum
banging against my leg,
counting out my steps,
confounding the dog.

You see, our yards are
nothing but undug graves.

If gravity is our undertaker,
then physics has pocketed
the stars, wearing a funeral
suit blacker than outer space.
Jonathan Witte Jan 2017
The spiders of sleep
are weaving words
in the back of her throat.

I listen to the sibilant
murmur of her dreams

unfurling.

She recites non sequiturs
to darkened walls, her bed

a stage draped in velvet
curtains of disassociation.

Incessant spinners,
spiders embroider

forsaken moonlight
into feathery pillow talk.

I am an audience of one.

When her monologue
is done, I blanket the bed sheets
with bouquets of bloodless roses.

Ashamed, I wait for more.

Her dreams scratch
at the face of the moon,
inscribing an encore.
Jonathan Witte Jan 2017
Transmogrified
by winter squalls,
the branches of the sycamore
have ossified into a cathedral
of snow.

A red cardinal alights
there—a spot of blood,
a feathered clot of sin.

Hush. Listen to the limbs
where he has perched:

the nascent cracking
of winter’s church.
Jonathan Witte Dec 2016
The bodies are buried
in boiler rooms below
precipitous buildings.

Tipped with gargoyles,
scabbed with windows,
the superstructures rise
on cords of carbon steel.

Inside miraculous husks,
the elevators lift and fall,

interminably.

Antiquated carriages
click like scarabs
on ropes and pulleys.

With interiors lit
by faint buttons,
the listless coffins

circulate our remains
behind gypsum walls.

When the elevator doors glide open,
an emerald chime sings your name.
Jonathan Witte Dec 2016
when the cold comes
when blinking hurts
when the wind chisels
through storm windows
and cleaves the rafters
when your breath cracks
when the ground is too
hard to dig another grave

it’s time

to grab your bag of tools
picks and saws and chippers

it’s time

to find yourself
a canyon of ice

to carve yourself
a bitter monument
Jonathan Witte Dec 2016
Sometimes I conjure
the after after the end:

our plaster cities bent and broken,
entire skylines scythed as flowers,

skyscrapers rent into oblivion,
lofty hotels and office towers

leveled to dark flatline—
the monotone of a final

wind barreling down,
inexorable, with no one

to hear its elegiac howl.

I picture myself ensconced
in an underground parking

garage scrounging to survive,
dismantling abandoned cars

piece by piece to pass the time, or
curled on an improbable mattress

remembering how I once watched
two birds quarreling over a piece

of pizza crust on the sidewalk
as I walked home from work

and thought to myself
as they startled into air

this is not the end.

Sometimes I conjure
the after as it ends:

when in an instant

every last bird rises
into the sky as one—

a cloud of feathers and bone
devoured by a heartless sun.
Jonathan Witte Dec 2016
Before kids we drove
a blue Chevy Corvair.
No seat belts (of course),

so you could slide next
to me in the bench seat.
We rolled the windows

down to escape the gas fumes
and the staggering smell of oil.
But oh the sound of the engine

roaring behind us in the trunk
as we accelerated close together,
the streetlights all turning green.

We leaned into loose curves,
navigating to the straightaway
where we would open up and fly

like lovers from some Springsteen
song until the road became nothing
and the car disappeared and it was

just you and me hurtling to this place,
suspended by our own combustion,
carried by time, married by velocity.
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