Knar Gavin

AMTRAK, SYRACUSE TO CHICAGO

I.

The children who’d spoken only French late into the night wake from snoring to exclaim in unison, SUNNY! I look up toward the nearest star coming wide across the field, wings spread to close the distance between me and that other westward, greater yet.

A single orange tabby streams across the leveled corn in a straight shot for the barn, grey and framed by twin silos.

‘Silo,’ from the Greek, siros, or ‘cornpit.’

The last of the ice slips the roof, ray-quickened into deformation.

II.

I hear them speak in English once more on the twelve-hour ride. GIVE ME THE MONEY, demands one boy of the other.

It settles on me that a silo is also an underground chamber, missiles waiting for guidance

SUGAR, BURNT

The wine lowers in our glasses

and our bellies begin to leak through

to the toes that pour into earth like rhizomes.

Steep and slow, we curl limbs to our bodies

like springs. A low hum leaves the cicadas as light

twitches from the porch fixture illuming the yard with

its assembly of moles, their shovel-hands facing always

out, reaching toward the next mole, and the next one.

A smear of cherry blossom covers the pathway to door,

its red breath swallowing smoke from our final wasted cigar.

The coals aren't yet out and the bass player next door won't hang

up that last and imperfect line. I leave the coals hot beneath fallen

hotdogs, husks and mallow drip. Little mouse, the leftovers:

Come out from your rotten planks and eat.

.

In talking about the candles we are

we must talk also of the candles, so

keep quiet, that small node of light

cupped beneath a hull of fingers,

no sooner floating than at full sea.

The door's ajar and the jaybird's in,

a round of grey chest stretched wide

with soft fruits and acorn swallowed down.

Morning will come when named and the name

is burnt sugar already on my evening tongue.

If it wasn't the porch wicker, then we were domesticated

by a solidarity with other large and flightless birds, dinosaur-bodied and

living out terrestrial lives. Friend, don't shiver there your itchy poncho. Tiny fissures

cast lines across your surface and you swell, billowed wide open with little doors in.

Knar Gavin is a velominatus with an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa and an MA in lit from Syracuse University. Her work has made or soon will make an appearance in Quarterly West, Poetry, Really System, Loose Change and glitterMOB. Knar is about to begin doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and you can visit her at tropopausing.com.