David Kutz-Marks

SERAPH

Some winged thing with no duende
hovering over the crowd

and everyone tonguing a duduk or plucking a bass,
hoping to bring the thing down

because it doesn’t understand
what a dirge is

or why the woman in the red slip
sips red wine every night for her heart,

how she feels for her neck as she does it.

It is like being rejected by meaning
now that it hovers above you

bored in your presence,
and the wing bones float like batons

over the scrolls of the wings
which tell us we must play

a dirge in E minor, a very flat one,
to make ourselves feel good.

—from Rattle #38, Winter 2012
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