By Ryan Dzelzkalns
I’d forgotten what it’s like to be in a crowd unnervous.
Tonight, all the people will walk around me and I’ll break
a sweat not once. Because Kinkaku-ji’s plated in gold
it keeps getting struck by lightning. Another hawk
swooping in the riot of green. I’d never seen so many birds,
when you did what you did to me. The delicate way
you quit my name out your mouth. Leaf subsiding to leaf
the oji-chan will keep sweeping them away. Things happen here
while they can. Pray then, let me stay by my own side.
The Kamo-gawa keeping to itself and me, murmuring
everything’s so beautiful in a crowd unnervous.
The egret swallowing what you did to me. I have become
a loose man mobbed by songbirds, our silhouettes
made strange by distance. The trees so cruel. Maybe this
is just the cost of desire. The house’ll burn down again,
but that’s what makes it beautiful.
Ryan Dzelzkalns has work appearing with Assaracus, DIAGRAM, The Offing, Rattle, Tin House, and others. He completed an MFA at New York University and a BA at Macalester College where he received the Wendy Parrish Poetry Award. He works for the Academy of American Poets and is the tallest man in New York.