Emily Brochin

Grieve

Nothing bad can happen in Alaska–

It’s a known fact.

The cold burns it all out,

Whatever’s left, the dogs take to their little corners.

If there are people in Alaska,

I don’t know about them.

If there were,

I’d make no guarantees.

I am told I will remember nothing;

All I see inside the vision is a sunless bright.

It will take awhile to float to shore.

And between mooring and unmooring,

Every eye that has ever laid upon me,

Will be shut.

One-at        a-time,

By a blessed hand.

Mechanical Birds

At the base of your pant-leg is a little machine

Which makes you able to touch me.

Below it is the cerulean paste board,

Jade-flowered bowl and glass insect eyes.

I say, the flesh is not hard.

It is the living dust you swept out of the room

In which there is nothing but smooth silence,

White and harsh

And big, dark stains.

The First to Hold the Dead

Last night I became a tomorrow woman,
There was nothing I could do.

The morning sun offered itself early,
And I saw the swallows coming down.

The men in their identical beds chew a thick breath and struggle for
what used to pass as meaning.

A glass of juice is a beautiful thing.

And still—
Tomorrowland is caught in the meat of yesternight.

When the hands that reached out for comfort
Were hot with the fever of thoughtless life.

The End of Things
A tree is a memory of seed,
the shadow of music is sighing.
War makes all sound now.
The only time you hear song is in the dark when you’ve wandered drunk from the pack,
howling at the moon like a runt cub forbidden milk.
Wondering why, of all instants the notes should squeeze themselves from tin noisemakers
and pursed lips. At moments, when the fire pops,
you can feel the actual beings; you can hear the actual tune;
you can see a bomb as it falls.

The Bell Maker

Fill the form with sand and bury the shape in it—

Cover the copper sea with hiss and douse the flames’ fall—

Who rings this stinging bass—

Who makes this evening-song’s rice,

Cold with a drop of oil—

It’s the bell maker,

It’s the bell maker,

It’s the bell maker.

He who pulls the bird through a loop of wire—

Can hold his tongue the longest—

And he who shapes the wedded wheel—

Can Rope the bull the strongest—

But he who calms the sleeping hair—

And he whose hands the widows sail,

It’s the bell maker,

It’s the bell maker.

It’s the bell maker.

When the town is sleeping—

When the straw toads reap their dream of dreaming—

The nocturne shadow crawls the alley dusking—

Begging tallow to burn the bell’s dark husk.

And the first strike’s struck—

And the second’s a serpent’s call—

The third’s a devil darkening the quick wet sky.

It’s the bell maker.

It’s the bell maker.

It’s the bell maker.

The Ballad of the Widows of Vrindavan

If you ask my name, I say ghost

And wander the temples

And ashrams of Vrindavan

Bent like a cane left under a tree.

Lord Krishna, I beg you:

return the pyres of my mother.

She did not endure these aimless days,

enshrouded like a silent clock.

I eat my cup of rice cold,

I spy on the insects in the street,

For who could ever look upon

the bad fortune that life replaced with death?

I dream of my last sight,

I dream of a circle unlocked,

I dream of the bracelets of my daughters,

jangling as they make afternoon chai.

Couplet

The way he curls about his drink

like a hibernating animal protecting its prey, a mink

perhaps. Their wet brown eyes

identical, drawing comfort that soon, everything dies.

So why not enjoy the breakable flesh in glory?

The minutes beating–why the worry?