To the polestar I leave my alien regalia.

To mercy I leave whatever.

Any fool can get into an ocean,

but it takes a hero to get out of one.

Wind chimes off-key in the alcove.  

We are a smear of obscenity

on the lake whose only peace

is a hole where the moon

abandoned us.  Sometimes

the speeches are so beautiful

it hurts.  At night before I go

to sleep, I am already dreaming.

I examine my feelings without

feeling anything.  Consider the hands

that write this letter.  I will consider you,

as you twist in a rapt mechanical dream.

Destroy yourself, if you don’t know.

If a rifle fires a shot in the woods,

whose body first hits the ground?

In a wailful choir the small gnats mourn. 

Where are the songs of spring?

In a cloud, in a tree, now I live. 

I have a seat in the abandoned theatre. 

I wait the hour when gods have more to give. 

Cento Attributions:

Peter Gizzi, Jack Spicer, Tess Gallagher, James Wright, Jane Yeh, Matthew Zapruder, April Bernard, Frank O’Hara, John Keats, Mahmoud Darwish, and David Koloszyc.

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Author of two poetry collections, Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon, 2020) and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and three chapbooks, including Empire of Dirt (above/ground press, 2019), Virginia Konchan’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere.