On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths Read Online Free

Sophie.

Photograph: Grandfather, 1915

    It’s the Bronx, Barretto Point, so the sea
    cannot be far away. But all we have to go on
    is the lone pine in the distance— the rest
    bleached by the chemistry of time. Also
    there’s this young man in the foreground, squatting
    with his forearms balanced on the fulcrum of his knees,
    speaking to what’s disappeared. It is a blur
    resembling a woman with her arm extended,
    urging him to follow. Soon the Great Depression
    will also call him, and for lack of other work
    will send him downstairs to the boiler
    where he’ll nurse the chromosome of sadness
    while his words turn into coal. But he was not really
    down there with the onions and potatoes—
    in a moment, he will follow her
    into the waters off Barretto Point, which will turn his good white shirt
    translucent. Like the translucence he was led by,
    but in this picture he hasn’t risen yet
    to cross the muddy shoreline. He’s still crouched
    in the upland, growing misty with the nebula who touches him,
    misty at the prospect of his likewise turning into mist
    as the camera makes this record of their betrothal.

Gleaner at the Equinox

    Dusk takes dictation from the houses.
    Sometimes sobs and sometimes screams—
    laughter, too, though it doesn’t settle like the others
    into the hollows of the Virgin Mary’s face.

    In her concrete gown, she’s standing by
    the satellite dish absorbing for the trailer on the corner,
    wearing shoulder pads of Asian pears I stole some of
    before the windfall fell. When the dog
    lifts his leg to soil a withered rose I say
Good boy.

    Nightshade vines overtake the house of the widow,
    their flowers turned into yellow berries
    that there are no birds in nature idiot enough
    to mistake for food.

    after Dick Barnes

Lubricating the Void

    Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper: I can barely pronounce your name
    but have been thinking of you ever since your grease gun
    erupted into space. Causing your tool bag to slip

    beyond the reach of your white glove, when you were attempting
    to repair the space station’s solar wing. Thanks
    for that clump of language—
solar wing!
One of the clumps

    of magic shat out by our errors. And thanks
    to your helmet camera’s not getting smeared,
    in the inch between your glove and bag— irrevocable inch—

    we see the blue Earth, glowing so lit-up’dly despite the crap
    that we’ve dumped in its oceans, a billion tons of plastic beads,
    precursors to the action figures that come with our Happy Meals.

    Precursors to the modern Christmas tree and handle of the modern ax.
    Precursors to the belts and jackets of the vegans.
    The cleanup crews call them
mermaid’s tears,
as if a woman

    living in the water would need to weep in polymer
    so that her effort would not be lost/so that there would be proof
    of her lament, say for the great Trash Vortex

    swirling in the current, for the bellies of the albatrosses
    filling up with tears that can’t be broken down.
    For the smell of mildew in the creases of ruptured beach balls,

    for seabirds strangled by what makes the six-pack possible,
    for flip-flops that wash up so consistently alone
    they cause disturbing dreams about one-legged tribes

    (described by Pliny before he sailed across the Bay of Naples,
    into Mount Vesuvius’s toxic spume).
    Dreams logical, Heidemarie, given the fearful data.

    Dreams had by us who live 220 miles below.
    Queasy from our spinning but still holding on,
    with no idea we are so brightly shining.

Not Housewives, Not Widows

    Bad luck to enter the houses of old women, a commandment
    broken when I entered their stone cottage, two streets over,
    covered in vines that twirled around a rusted swing set
    though they had no child. That they were witches: a conclusion

    come to, given that they wore the clothes of men,
    their wool caps covering their secret hair, their house
    so laced in greenwork that it seemed continuous with