The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Wilderness//Kingdom by Jory Michelson

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Dear Federico

It’s late. I’ve stood for hours
watching swallows strike
and swivel at the insects’
commas. The certain
circling they commit to
feed themselves. We first
acknowledged one another
on the bridge above their frenzy,
in the growing dark. We tethered
together, all pause and follow,
while streetlights burst
amber over tulip poplars
that guide the river’s dark cord.

On the empty steps of my apartment,
you offer me a cigarette, and I take it
simply to touch your hand,
even though I haven’t smoked
in years. Federico, I don’t understand
your poems with their silverlipped
volcanoes and your
obsession with the dangers
of the moon: all salted, all boot
crushed, all clovered in mold.

As if I dreamt the careful linen
of your shirt, the undoing of the black
slick of your hair in the concrete’s shy
heat. I was afraid you’d mistake
my hesitation for the bleeding of juniper
into the air, the long tongue of the sky
refusing, a zipper’s seam split open.

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