MATTHEW ROHRER

Drinking with Your Brother

Drinking with your brother

on the boardwalk

a foggy Thursday night

fifty people

in medieval

burgundy robes

walk by quietly

the police

have caught a sand shark

you’re at home

I think sitting

still with a light

in you glowing

in the living room

I almost hear

country music

and smell your breath

the atomized ginger

still in your hair

from this morning

I have wanted to say

for 18 years

something like the muezzin

says from the tower

about you

that everyone will believe

and they will turn

off their televisions then

and lie down on their beds

in the dark looking

out into the night

where a storm

pulls itself up

out of a sea fog

to be noticed

and they notice

the storm in other things

the plovers shot out

of the night

into the surf

their voices

faintly white

Rodina

Rodina I thought that was your name

and I was wrong,

but I’m going to keep thinking it

it’s too late to look back

you are a black angel

not of death but of

the darkness in the spring

lying back on the stone beneath you

in the cemetery

deer come to pursue you

but you never move

a black heavy exhaustion upon you

thank you for your blessing

of love, it flowered

it spread into the sun

when I close my eyes

it really is you

swept up in the distant

thunder creeping up to surround

the house

Luna Moth

Luna Moth visit me

again behind

the tool shed

settle on the air

beside me silently

nothing to say

move your wings

preposterously slowly

remain aloft

your own rhythm

finds you beside a fence

where I was tinkering

with a catapult

to peg cars

and then attain glory

in another city

silently

in the dusk coming apart

behind a shed

you are born

without a mouth

you never eat

or swear at the radio

but I turn my back

on you, it’s nighttime

I have to return home

what you seek

can never be called love

Triptych

Unquiet moon on the water

battered by the voices

of ducks—comes

together in the darkness

of question & answer

and falls apart

others see it too

in the blackness I assume

they are beautiful

My job was to clean

the erasers at night

in the astronomy building

and erase the science

from the boards

shutting off the light

the fog of night—not

blackness—lit up

by the old equations—

this never was fully appreciated—

the maple trees and parking meters

At the top of the museum

is an opening down to the ground level

—ask Henry what the architectural term is—

several of the walls

are made of glass

the overall effect produced

is that I will throw myself to my death

against my will

the electricity that travels

my meridians—it is

a powerful piece

I have been sitting for too long

in front of a painting

that doesn’t deserve it

if I stare into it

I can believe in ghosts