And Flickering Tethers You to Me

this flame remembering candles your bones
So many windows splitting aloneness

make the skyline a colander strain night and day into ruins
Do you see what breaks in my rooms

Memory a blade churning heat
bomber planes you swore had flown

in your bedroom your past sliding
like eggs on a buttered pan the day before you died

Cars machine-gun I look out my window and see Sunday
stroking the city tangled sun

water-towers kneeling
republic of phenomena between the clouds

Death chiseling its own empire for our fluid
stone fire navigating light


—in memory of my father