David Donna

Phase

I'd dreamed of a desert—clear night skies to wander,
pouched foil blankets plumping my rucksack,
trackless, under a new name,
of the barest cirrus wisps flecking
a purgatory blue.

I clung with both eyelids; my muscles held
only themselves, and too briefly at bay
the reddening return,
the violent logic of day—

               The wrong world ended.

I sit up,
tug on yesterday's jeans and stumble
towards the sink / the street outside crawls
like a river / families wade in the morning
light and cyclists in traffic pump
their thighs / the ceiling grins down
like a crocodile / the grid
flickers,

             The             world

then reasserts itself / gaps
around burnt-out bulbs / the toothpaste
disappeared / somewhere.

I wash up with anything at hand.
              I woke knowing
You emerge from the shower, touch
my hip / I startle
out of joint / I woke knowing
we've been stranded
on the wrong side of

                         knowing

I'd been saving cardboard boxes
for little gods to make homes of
so I could carry them wherever I walked.

But when the wrong world ended
the sugar in the kitchen became
      salt / now,
starving gods drag their little bodies
along the sunstruck stretch of windowsill

exposed, expiring / their many
legs curled inward / scattered
glyphs of a stillborn alphabet.

              I need
               A second to recount:

Most of our friends are still online.
Most of the dry goods made it.
I watch you bend down, graceful
with wastebasket in one hand, the other cupped,
brushing the windowsill clear.

________________________________________________________________________________________

David Donna's poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Ibbetson Street and elsewhere (listed at poetry.daviddonna.com). They live in eastern Massachusetts, where they write code and poetry by turns.