Let me sing you a waltz

The Lumineers - Ho Hey

Mark Yakich - a poem

Dear Mr. Whitman,

I picked up a hairy little leaf knowing,
As I did every cranny by heart,
How obscure the woods could get.

I came an awfully long way not simply
To listen to my dolly torque up
A little aspiration for the sun.

I was lost in my thoughts or, more
Properly, I was lost in you, Sir.
When I got back home, I had so many

Chores to do that didn’t seem worth
Their names. Now I ask you to help—
Please write me a note from the grave.

Because Daddy still doesn’t believe me
When I tell him that I’m afraid
To mow the grass. Always, Sylvia

The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine, Penguin, 2008

Summer Camp

Embrace Noir - Nick Flynn

I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.

They jerk around the apartment like that
holding on to each other, their cheeks

almost touching. One is shirtless, the other
wears a suit, the one in the suit came in through a window

to steal documents or diamonds, it doesn't matter anymore
which, what's important is he was found

& someone pulled a gun, and now they are holding on,
awkwardly dancing through the room, upending

a table of small framed photographs. A chair
topples, Sinatra's band punches the air with horns, I

lean forward, into the screen, they are eye-to-eye,
as stiff as my brother & me when we attempt

to hug. Soon, the gun fires and the music
quiets, the camera stops tracking and they

relax, shoulders drop, their jaws go slack
& we are all suspended in that perfect moment

when no one knows who took the bullet--
the earth spins below our feet, a blanket of swallows

changes direction suddenly above us, folding
into the rafters of a barn, and the two men

no longer struggle, they simply stand in their wreckage
propped in each other's arms. 

Some Ether, Graywolf Press, 2000.

Buke & Gase

Why Stop Now?