Jordan Deveraux

Winterizing

In the version of my life in which I wake up early

enough to beg the two-man demolition crew to spare
the picnic tables they’re dismantling in the court-

yard, they let me pick a souvenir out of the rubble.
I rescue the board into which Grace carved stars

with a housekey when the wood was wet with rain.
I keep that board in my closet until I’m ready to build

a house—where I use it as a rib in the frame
because the heart wants continuity, the heart wants a star

tattoo. The heart wants legato in a world full
of staccato, the preferred music of the hammer.

In the version of my life in which, by the time

I look into the courtyard from my window, I’m too
naked to go down and ask for one last moment

with the picnic tables, which is this one, I watch
the men cart off the wood in wheelbarrows

to a place where it may constitute a pile—
think of how we sat under the balding sycamore

one afternoon, can almost taste the wine on my lips.

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Jordan Deveraux's poems have been published in Bodega, Gravel, The Meadow and elsewhere. Originally from Utah, he now lives in NY, where he works as a substitute teacher.