Eternal
………………..after Sneha Subramanian Kanta

a window slams and the umbrella of birds         opens, swallowing breadcrumbs of light
from between the leaves. A boy with palms       like copper pinches his small fist and stares
as the sky steals itself blind. Thieves of               every currency envy youth its shine.

butterflies or burst balloons
………………………………………….there is nothing kind
……………………………………………………………………………about the end of flight

in absence cicadas
share a silence with specters

each leave their bodies lying
everywhere

the corpse in my curtains that isn’t //
dead or undead // gathers its shadows //
restful and permanent as seed // to lie in the earth //
seventeen years // composing your first song // for the moment
of your arrival // what commitment to life //
but birds get all the glory //
cloud-kissed and anxious // your time in the earth
is only practice // the weight of the world //
impressed upon you early // you rise
to shed your beginning

somewhere in Texas a boy crawls among the birds, pressing his head
……………………………….to the ground as if searching for someone

Clairvoyance

Can the palm reader also interpret
the spider’s web? I doubt these crazed
lines illuminate any fortune. These hands
can barely contain water, much less
the weight of an entire future. Like an ocean
filled with currents, who’s to say which
way any of them will run?

Just because it happened yesterday
doesn’t mean today holds any such guarantees.
The rain turns my umbrella into a lonely hum. Alone
I hold the mirror’s gaze through an antique store
display, scry the horizon with a drifter’s eye.
Unbroken as fresh laid eggs, every bird
has a shadow to flirt with.

Every ocean some view of heaven
the fish adore. Here I am, fondling my last
ten-dollar bill outside the clairvoyant’s door,
wearing a tattoo of my own flesh, seeking
a future where the photographs
have not forgotten me already. Whisper
a wish without currency.

A paper boat drifts across a drain without
Sinking in the gutter. I want to float my small faith
Along rivers asking the stars to show me
their hands. If rain is evidence of anything, it is
that I am too stubborn for signs. Forensic
evidence is required. There is no death without
a body, and mine too often

leaves the room before I make up my mind
to go. Maybe this is a kind of self-determination.
To exit without a plan. The tea leaves
blush shamelessly in the bottom of my cup,
but the future is written without a map.
At best the heart seeks only

to know it is still here. Still breaking windows
with its careless aim. Will still be here tomorrow.
Curling haloes like stones across the icy
precognition of solitude that has me seeking the dead
for conversation. Paying strangers
to hold my hand and tell me it will be alright.

____

Zachary Kluckman is a nationally ranked slam poet and Pushcart Prize nominee with more than 100 poems in print worldwide. He is the 2012 winner of the Red Mountain Press National Poetry Prize. His newest collection, Rearview Funhouse, was published by Eyewear Publishing in 2023.