Ben Passikoff
LOOKING AT DEATH IS DYING
Those crosses
nailed for spread
of unpraying arms and
one swift twist
of braided legs - limit,
one body done, unsouled,
one to a cross, single
signpost - toenails still growing.
Unsplintered,
better measured
other crosses
rosed by morning,
twilight-lilied in cathedrals
holied by history;
or multiples of night,
in high Peruvian
tattered cold - crossed
bones in compassionate hang,
harmonic to the bones
of needy knees.
Arlington, Pinelawn -
white crossed sticks
othering last Army landscape.
Chorus of crosses,
endless echo to each
other, buried blood
of military arithmetic.
THE STATUE IS IN THE STONE
said Michelangelo, with fingers tuning
the tonsure of latest lover, newly tutored
in two arts: disturbance of the stone,
and more specific tremor of the flesh.
Although with differing chisel, both
require elegance of penetration:
fingers involved in tendons of stone;
red muscle writhing of the moment.
After hormonal consonance
they sculpt together:
young honeyhead and dagger-pointed beard
instructing stone to live.
Aberrant, in surround,
demented bells salute the smoke
of blackening Savonarola,
and, passing through,
the lionhair of Leonardo.
TAIL OF THE WOLF
Tells to his ilk of hunger, distance, hope,
close water, menace, and the mess of kill -
wisenose wrinklesniff of gone aroma.
The tail, tense triangle of meaning
in tribal syntax, beating wailmusic
shaped for the long listen
of leaning trees, for tearing of old throats,
for halted paws in brotherhuddled warmth
icicling under the slice of tundra moon.
When overtaken by the speed of time,
or rigorously mangled by precise steel
or, bullet-bitten, blood deltaic over
worts, morels - aorta-empty under
circling birds harmonic to his solo
funeral, his fur, his memory:
already ancestor.
Contributor's Note
