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At Once Sealed and Soluble
by Will Russo

March 10, 2022 Contributed By: Will Russo

Irises by Claude Monet
Irises by Claude Monet, courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago

 

after Charles Wright

 

Bedroom

A course of brickwork. Maze of mortar gluing head to head,

bed upon bed

stacked flat towards a sky on which I can’t

lie. Wall’s a cutup, sum of parts. Perfection of right angles

 

foreboding, forbidding oblongs and obtuses, acute vertices.

Add the corners, they make a circle—tessellations

of box spring, infinity mirror. I’ve said this before:

 

straightness is manmade. Rod and rhombus, lozenge, square—

they go round and round around

an axis. Planet ever-turning

its head away in shame.

Darkened into so many halves.

 

———————

 

Tree Roots

Evergreen is bone and pigment. Grows projectile out of ground.

Boughs snapped for thick blood. Resin drains from once-limbs

like beads of paint—is this rumor? Gamboge: top-heavy with unripe fruit,

 

the tree bears the yellow name without resemblance

like an adopted child.

Did the gum once flow within the tree, or does this method

transplant stillness? Pollen-soaked hot spring

 

and smaller remedies. Over their bodies, monks fold robes—

the color of alchemy drips shoulder to ankle. Only

a name stitched, very small, in white thread.

 

———————

 

Wheat Field

How yellow the room became, morning streaking in.

Your fingers on my jagged lines: thick bumps of paint,

as if a song in braille, and blood so dry it flakes.

 

You fit in my palm like the lightfast colors

of spices, synthetic

tints squeezed from tubes. Our drunken, immortal orpiment

overtaking other yellows—cool oatmeal sheet to a coat of king’s gold.

 

A field another mirror. An empty search. Even the sun

with its angles, the dipped tip of my arrow

flying, flows through the earth in its veins.

 

———————

 

Bedroom

Had a dream. A piano descending, its descent

deliverance.

When my life is over, forget the shortcoming of my dramas.

The hourglass and its many acts. Remember

 

when we were together, the scene of scratches and scrolls

lining the walls in a sequence memorized

as a saved date. Fluids correctional 

and textual. Remember the raw opening

 

of a tomb; seal mine with poisoned wax. It has awakened

against you. We were alone and I was singing

this song to you. Behold, it comes.

 

———————

 

The Poet

Chronic disease, overwork, sadness: the patience of a brother.

Where’d his letters go?

Overshadowed, flowers’ need not met.

 

I painted your portrait—another box you fit in. The color

of your shirt and cheeks

the same. I said, I am here

to paint infinity, and made each star a proud printed hoof.

 

Hair shed from a hide. Grandson,

murdered impresario.

Illness makes selfishness, giving all we have

to ourselves…

 

———————

 

Worn Out

Every sport’s a war. Clay court, balls of neon felt,

the path leading nowhere. Ball boys. Be copy now

to men of grosser blood.

Shame—conflicted of the dangers, being seen or being

 

caught. Let us swear that you are worth

your breeding. Secrets kept, waiting for me to find them

hidden. A jaw broken into as a vault, a fault not of steel

but of what’s to be stolen.

 

Wasp caught in a web, sticky tangle of wings; spider crawling home

to meet her feast. Combat 

of spindly legs and stinger.

Such horrors. Only such horrors.

 

———————

 

Bedroom

We were too young for Frank O’Hara—for too much coffee,

too many cigarettes. After sixty years, I still won’t know

where to lie.

In our anxious quarantine, a suicide sold—the hoax

 

of a priceless, violent relic: gun found by a man who fires

clay. Ceramic puzzle box, repetitious mosaic. The latch

loosens; pulled like a crush, the shackle splits

 

from its body. A lock is an impasse,

at once sealed and soluble.

Wheel, spun towards a sole code, that adorns what needs holding.

 

———————

 

Irises

Sky’s a limp blue, cowering and covering the cloud tops.

Albedo, budget, shield, and filter. Then lend the eye

a terrible aspect. Whiplash from the drastic styles

of neighboring houses.

 

Stems cradle blooms—their tiny beards, flaps shriveling open.

Thread a picked one over a finger, heavy as betrothal.

Now set the teeth

and stretch the nostril wide. We’re alone now. Sunset—

 

its red flames, bulk and monotone. A flattening.

Twin graves of devotion. Angle and outline.

Such asylums of the garden.


WILL RUSSO is a Chicago-based poet and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. His work has appeared in Watershed Review, Salamander, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He serves as Poetry Editor at Great Lakes Review. Find him on Twitter: @iamthewillrus.

Filed Under: Featured Content, Featured Poetry, Poetry Posted On: March 10, 2022

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