Michael Boccardo

Elegy with Cigarettes & a Dead Movie Star

All summer I obsessed.
Myself & the mundane intimately
acquainted—blank walls, a lidless sky,

the moon courting a bare window.
Morning broke like a bowl collecting
redemption inside. Early light

glazing my skin. I let it.
In bed, where his shadow once dozed,
I became mosaic. 

*

His letter followed
me. Everywhere, I followed
his letter. Its vulgar 

keystrokes, the indifference
of apology. It thrashed
in the cave of a coat pocket.

Yellowed feathers, sick beak.
The shrillest note. My body
buckled, made a cage of itself.

*

Sundays I spent
at the market for no reason.
For no reason, I bagged 

only lemons & grapefruit.
Thick-skinned sunsets & my unruly
nails. I persisted. 

Up my wrists blushed
his sticky perfume. Our palate
a bitter shame.

*

It is said after cremation
the average adult body
weighs five pounds. 

Months I waited for my ghosts
to change shape. I smoked
them out. Smoked them back in. 

His favorite plate lay ruined.
Into its ceramic I snuffed enough ash
to conjure another lover. 

*

On our anniversary I woke
a dozen candles. Those years
blazed like a marquee: old

Hollywood: black & white.
Our bodies a double feature—
Trapped & Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.

Inside me, a vacant seat—I
waited & waited. Just another
dead movie star, extinguished. 

*

I began the task of taking
stock. Weighed it by the ounce.
Lamps. Books. The coarse 

linen. For every box marked
Sorrow, three more scratched with
Regret. When I tried lifting

the heaviest, the one
he labeled Silence, I gave up.
Instead, I climbed inside.

*

My hands cast their grace:
wingspan, nest. The tracks
that once knit our path, the two 

halves of. I couldn’t decipher
the branches, his oath,
such stilted language. 

As we folded, I tore at the sky
tasted wind. My mouth
a sudden burden of blood.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Michael Boccardo’s poems have appeared in various journals including Kestrel, storySouth, Spoon River Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Comstock Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose, and Art on HIV/AIDS and Southern Poetry Anthology, VII: North Carolina. He is a four-time Pushcart Nominee and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, NC, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at www.michaelboccardo.com.