Russel Swensen
The bright day is done and we are for the dark
beneath the floorboards or pressed against the walls
like wet newsprint the brightness of the lion humming
in our chest the orchids whose roots grasp only air
all of this must be a stand-in for something else some
dark roar some girl gasping “holy roses!” and a job
that goes missing a city raised on a diet of cigarettes
and never-kissing drinking in the alley behind our house
a boy with a face like a sun-stain saying “unpleasant to
intolerable, unpleasant to intolerable” who are these denizens
of our dreams shouldn’t we have found the time to have better
dreams they dig the voice box out of the steppes of my chest
the detectives hold it in their hands like smoke they breathe on it
they breathe it in I walk into my office with great calm and composure
put a finger to your lips we’re for the dark a boy wins a contest to hold
a drill convention you’re like “you know?” and I’m like “yes but with more
holes” when we were younger it made more sense it's amazing to me too that
I’m amazed Cass we need to make your mind a cloud and I remember you
kneeling in front of the manor the bright day is done and we are for the dark
that settles over the park like a blanket over a burn victim “you’ll be fine” the
nurse said “just don’t feel anything.”