Miles away you spot the plastic duck, the huntsman’s
bluff, and the blood you’d spill
you spare not a drop
in letters sealed in wax and signet
ring. In plans to rebuild cities
and bridges, you’d tag without ceremony
the poems of Walt Whitman and Hart Crane.
You drive everywhere in a city that goes against
the natural laws of the city itself, always on time
except one cold Thanksgiving where you couldn’t find
that last stop
Flushing hole-in-the-wall.
Under a canopy of plastic tarp, shivering
on plastic stools around a charcoal-heated table,
we spoke of this world ending, and you listed your abilities
to fight off viruses, volcanoes, tsunamis
even yourself
if bitten by monkey, mosquito,
your own mother.
Eat well, she says for the many things
we over-say. Eat well, I’d offer
my bones for soup and what little flesh I have,
lest the infection unleashes
the kind of hell that leaves
but an unkindness
of ravens
playing in fresh snow.
One more night we knew
we’d see tomorrow. One more night
drunk and alive in the depths of Queens,
carousing with cooks in open-air kitchens,
how we swore our lives on those
ducks strung up in their windows
in which we will gather our sorrows,
those last days
of cloth napkin and unsullied blade
readied at the long, long table. Eat well,
dear friend. Eat well,
my blood brother.
first published in Dialogues 2