<div class="line">Spring and I’m on my perch doing my courtship dance</div>
<div class="line">to the stars asking for poems and accolades and a thousand</div>
<div class="line">pages with my name written over and over. It’s simple</div>
<div class="line">to want one thing so much you strap a bomb to your chest</div>
<div class="line">and shake hands with strangers. Don’t blame god for this mess</div>
<div class="line">but don’t take him out of the equation entirely. I’m walking around</div>
<div class="line">like a pink bird trying to find the hidden caterpillar, attempting to speak</div>
<div class="line">phantom, doing my best impression of a man all but crowned.</div>
<div class="line">What’s it like in your kingdom? Disposal still broken, the town drunk</div>
<div class="line">still calling you queer? How much have you lost on a single bet</div>
<div class="line">you wouldn’t gladly turn to pennies and flatten like dominoes</div>
<div class="line">on a track back to Missouri? When you say “a milk in this world</div>
<div class="line">sweet enough to last” I get so jealous I want to put you in a hot air</div>
<div class="line">balloon and send you to Mars and write my name on your poems.</div>
<div class="line">Of course, history is full of people like that. Grifters and short-</div>
<div class="line">shrifts. Sometimes it happens to a country entire and nothing is left</div>
<div class="line">but the wind that used to work itself like a boa over shoulders</div>
<div class="line">and the fires where they were go down to nothing like the ghost</div>
<div class="line">of a ghost. But don’t go feeling sorry. Don’t go setting nets</div>
<div class="line">under every acrobat. Just put a knife in your teeth and grab a rope</div>
<div class="line">and do your best to find a ledge. You wouldn’t believe the luck</div>
<div class="line">we had one summer in Idaho coming around a bend to find a bear.</div>
<div class="line">All she did was look, bored as a drug dealer, at us, then lick herself</div>
<div class="line">and go. It was like a story almost. Something you’d write then x</div>
<div class="line">out, choosing instead for the great tiger in the sky to run us down</div>
<div class="line">like children to a mantis. Then, feeling too sad to fuck, we tell our wives</div>
<div class="line">we are too sad to fuck. Something as plain as bewilderment</div>
<div class="line">in a city where it never snows and all of a sudden out of nowhere it does.</div>


The Shape of Your Elbow

If Men Could

Dear Phil,

<p class="epil"><em>Las Vegas Shooter’s Room in Mandalay Bay Hotel Blessed by Catholic Priest<br />—Newsweek headline, 10/25/17</em></p>
<div class="line">Even the ants in the walls</div>
<div class="line">are Catholic, on all knees</div>
<div class="line">&amp; hauling in their mouths</div>
<div class="line">the dead home, rising</div>
<div class="line">between floors toward</div>
<div class="line">heaven. If there is wind</div>
<div class="line">it is from the window-</div>
<div class="line">less part of the room</div>
<div class="line">where a hole ten butterflies wide</div>
<div class="line">whistles the whole night</div>
<div class="line">more silent. And a man</div>
<div class="line">speaking for the living.</div>
<div class="line">Isn’t this all we can do? Wait</div>
<div class="line">for diamonds. Clutch someone’s</div>
<div class="line">heart. In the desert a star</div>
<div class="line">means luck. Some nights</div>
<div class="line">after a bad beat or run</div>
<div class="line">of jacks you might hear them</div>
<div class="line">falling and believe you are hearing</div>
<div class="line">the first word echoed back,</div>
<div class="line">the blessing that says</div>
<div class="line">tonight in this shining city</div>
<div class="line">even the stars will drop.</div>
<div class="line">Buckets of the rarest coin.</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/WhitneyBlessing.mp3"></audio></figure>

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October 31, 2017The BlessingJeff Whitney

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October 31, 2017The BlessingJeff Whitney

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Dear Phil, by Jeff Whitney