Alas
She says
do not, we do not touch,
do not touch.
Pinprick monsters, the beautiful rash
of red dot, red dot. We see.
We fetter ourselves to memory, we see
her when we cannot see her.
We clutch a fever on her behalf.
Her absence whines at an erstwhile door,
wanting to come in.
We see what we don’t see. A whisker,
a whisker of smoke. Rash of
orange curls, flame,
the heat’s skin
we reach, we overreach.
The Dusk Congregation
The Dusk Congregation
When we arrive, we will smell inevitable, like mildew.
Our breath is silent. Our breath is a small window cut into a deep wall.
We promised—we cannot say what—
but a promise is a manifestation.
An infestation. A manifestation.
There is a sieve in wonder. We pour through it.
Tonight we are not here under the yellow moon
so that you may hear the tawny owl.
When we arrive, we promise only to
have arrived as the antonym of absence.
Not that you will see our silvery antennae, our pale
clopping hooves, the cyan-colored woodpecker
that flies soft and off-kilter.
Hunched over our sleeping bodies, huffing our silent breath.
You grope for us. As you grope, your fingers are inevitable,
a spore proliferating in soil.
All of us blind: us, you.
All of us plural, redundant.
As we spew a hidden light,
our sightless, blank faces shed photons.
Here is proof that no one can see—wriggling,
irradiated seeds on the earthen floor.
Elizabeth Robinson is a recent Pushcart Prize winner and will be featured in the next edition of Best American Poetry. She has won the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in poetry. Her upcoming books include Vulnerability Index (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books) and Being Modernist Together (Solid Objects).