Boombox Ode: Enjoy the Silence
BY K. IVER
A landline lets me dance with you.
My one-deck and your two-deck
are dialed to 98.5 fm without
an echo. If we speak aloud
this miracle of fiber wire
and radio wave, harmony
could split. From our speakers:
soft synth, a baseline, a choir
reverbing, a guitar riff that rises
and falls, asks and answers. I can’t
see your movement, the bedroom
you’re quiet in. Somewhere, bodies
like ours are pulsing under the same
pink neon to the same words
like violence, break–Bodies like ours
are touching and strangers watch
only because they’re gorgeous.
Let me pretend you’re back in my
bedroom, before my mother found us.
You’ve risen from the pine floor
and pulled me up. You want me
to stand for this. Let me pretend
all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever needed
is here. Tell me that’ll be us. Soon.
Because you can’t,
BY K. IVER
I stand in front of paintings a long time
and think about the bones once belonging
to you and how Egon Schiele could line
a body into movement. Because you no longer
have a shape, I’ve made a practice of nearness.
A hawk lets me stroke her mid-flight,
I let comets land in my mouth,
when they’re small enough. My lover
pushes all their weight on me because I asked.
They flatten me into astonishment.
Because nothing can astonish you, I tempt
what’s alive by doubting I could love it more.
It’s a neat trick. When I use it, raccoons
visit often, their fingers closed around mud
older than me. Missy, this is me moving on.
There’s a noon rain to get caught in and many
clavicles to behold. I wish you could see this one,
tilting across a century.
