Johann Sarna

PLUSH

I am one of time’s hearts.
I look at death, we have things in common,
common interests. To fall
flower-wise. To kneel before purple rice noodles, a
plash of whiskey. To seem seamier,
harder, to be that cockroach on a
cruise ship, proud and agile as
shadow. It doesn’t change how the
ferns fondle the stray cats. It doesn’t
break me on my night plod.
I thought I could lie my way
from one stop to another because
the paper said a name. To pick you up
I must first greet one mile of cemetery.
I must watch orange fade, the clouds
molt out of night, the galaxy slip away.
It makes no promises.
But I was talentless
and now feel light. How would you live
after bowing to a habanero unable to
forget its palatial ridging? How can I go on
when the tracks always lead away from
this arena of sound, to a black dog
left leashed to the rude bole, where the inland
water waits in its coal eddy, in soft
certitude for its great metamorphosis?
My insides have gone dark I can’t be
tracked. What touches the world is still here
and different though I can never go where you
slip so easily, the chartreuse chairs and green doors
of kind being, bare leasing
a self so deft. I could’ve sworn
that your eye in morning, every morning,
could not be a birth.
Selah. I love you. Wildnesses
occupy our teeth. Together we have
such gall for not being ghosts.

Johann Sarna’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Narrative Magazine, Washington Square Review, and Ninth Letter. He lives in Austin, Texas.