Jonathan MINTON
Dark Sky Preserve
After the earthquake, the city
went dark. We were fearful
of the sky, of the luminous
alien cloud above us, of the never
before seen light of the milky way
the sky in blaze
of before the fact
& fearful
without
the abstract
equivalent:
as storm cloud is intemperance,
is swollen shape: shaping in light
of that, this
alienated/or lineated: re-
arranged in
strange sky
for clarity, if what clarity
there is:
as seen by,
in name of, reliable as
pull of flags,
as the monument in mood light, the face in profile
by which apparatus, glass is window
to "sky white as raw silk,"
sky white as porcelain cup
white as porcelain cup
sky white
white as porcelain
as porcelain
cup
such likeness as—
a gesture of light
glaring through glass,
weightless, even
while plausibly worded
word for white
word for windowed word for
—still
darkly there:
under our unseemly
clouded sky:
crabgrass spilling walls:
groundswell beneath it all