notes: delicate and direct oriental delicassy, your questions are sparks. I feel old and I feel fine.

to W.H. Auden

Scraps of appreciation
on the door of my wardrobe
In my inbox
My outbox.
One winter, after a week of skies like dust,
I nearly traced you on my body,
indissolubly,
across dud-wing shoulder blades.

Last night, even, I found
your shit copied longhand and jammed into
a pile
of ancient birthday cards.
Among postcards from Marrakech,
Stockholm, China,
your poem is breeding -
A printout in Courier,
heavy seam of creasing where it'd been
folded
and pressed tight by hyper-glossy music rags
dating back to oh-one.

You wrote a poem that I married my life to,
My youth, forfeit
in a hasty moment of unthinking passion
to your two-dozen lines
or so.

And of course you've sculpted me,
old man, dead poet.
A child of cutting edges
that trim
and rarefy language,
watching words become antique ornaments,
I smell of you.
sing harmonies of you, behind the anthem choruses
of my rock shows.

You did this,
whose starched collars and bowler hats
would be at odds with the new streets,
squid-inked as they are
and encrusted
with the lymph jewels
of a city's decadence.

But it was your expired wonder
that rattled me
helped wind me,
and steadied my bones, soft,
upon this garish tarmac.

Old poet, dead man.

Light Less Public
Sara Saab