Fugue 87 | Where We Walk w/Grief
How could this poem be the hair of a tree
sunglare leaking from whose mouth
there will be no guarantee we can
walk with the grief, where the grief sours
my lips that had been wet with your kiss
and have I been kissed, who slipped in whose arms
you try to touch something in me, reach down, pull
a smooth moon from the mouth
of the stream, some days we don’t swim
but turn in wet cement, follow
the crest & breaking, I touch you, you
sink further in yourself, you dive in
after, like sun splits across water
Fugue 113 | The Municipality of Daydreams
In the coffee, the days, the long and icy haze that is the week, a distended bag on the beach though
the start of something trembles, though we zone the garden, knit each other’s
numbers, stumble in the build, b/c we no longer want to work alone, though our work pulls you toward a lonely isle
maybe it’s for the silver, the traveling planet & space between constellations that so attracts us
b/c there’s no choice but to voyage alone, in a rehearsal of tripping off this Zoom call, spooled
in the coffee, fireballs, beers, & fists of wine, asking for a raise when what I mean is I
quit, the addict in me ringing the doorbell again at 4 am and taking off, you turn in bed
think of the lake, as a whole city of loss, a horribly luminous record
of slaughter that must condition action, think of the packet of 100 parsley seeds as something
that should be shared and you talking, in the parkway strip
then on R’s porch, that’s history too, and being remembered, that there is
a plant, a zero and a one, a humid atmosphere, like a frog egg, an only
overwrap for all this arriving, for all this shocking pleasure, & sap
for all this gathering, looking from you to you on the train, stepping back into
the corner store, then out into the acres of compost: black banana peels, orange rinds sprayed
w/mold, the paths of beetles and worms, unwinding carbon of leaves
then I see you on your porch, your bike on its back, testing the chain, link by link
Joe Hall is the author of five books of poetry, including Someone’s Utopia (2018) and Fugue & Strike (forthcoming). His poems, reviews, and scholarship have appeared in Poetry Daily, Postcolonial Studies, Peach Mag, terrain.org, PEN America Blog, Poetry Northwest, Ethel Zine, Gulf Coast, and Best Buds! Collective.