The Brooklyn Rail

Yet we gather in our sonic disunities
        an incongruous pantry                   —the kale and mackerel go badly,
       l’s and smells lingering

Yet I long, even in dislodging somnia, for your weight
       a stone turning                        —away and into: prepositioned
alliances
       hewn and heft before hewn and heft after

 

Yet an evening’s inconsistency is no lessening
of the shadows distancing          —is from was from will be       from will have been
from want
                                   tense taut as rigor                as eleventh-hour rigor
mortis

 

Yet it isn’t cheeky melancholy but rather burnished clearing
       that a naïve girl reckons a trivial sadness                            —in cities and nations
tearing
       what the naïve girl can’t answer—“Who is s/he, and what is s/he to you?”

Yet what might we have known had we cleaned “come”
of its daily leans and liens           “Is she lonely?” he asks from a desire-throated
song that makes him bluer seeming

Yet seeing demands
Yet looking without seeing demotes
the us we easily purchase at the Dollar General or Neiman Marcus
Yet seeing devotes
us to the we
we, instead, might be coming to be