Two Poems
love poem with a tiny lizard, a white hole, & the absolution of John the Baptist
for Moofy
after Kaveh Akbar
in the shrine i build for you
my mother looks down
at the five bouquets pinning her
wedding gown to an oxblood carpet,
a sixth bouquet dangling
from her right hand.
i’m the only one here still mourning.
for every black hole swilling away
all light, say some, exists a white hole
doing exactly as you’d expect:
light blocking light. pushes out
all matter. many experts scoff
but doesn’t every anything have its foil?
driving home, your fingers keep grazing
the steering wheel cover
where you burned a hole with a cigarette,
distracted by something i said, was saying,
i don’t remember what it was now,
but you listened. in the deep heat
of a jersey summer there’s a photo
of you holding a lizard or maybe
the lizard is holding onto you.
you’re so small. barely old enough to know
what angels do. the lizard grips your thumb,
the rest of your fingers knowing even
enough not to crush it. only briefly
have i sated such seethe.
i’m a hundred miles away catching moths
clinging to my grandparent’s screen door
naming only the ones that love me
enough to leave. i’ve forgotten their names
but remember the burgundy shirt you wore
when you were three.
take me & break me, for I am willing to be broken,
John the Baptist offered
before even Jesus was crucified.
what other sober & precise counsel
could account for God sparing still
the beast in me? how even his tenderest mercies
are wasted on me? let’s just say it straight:
it terrifies me a year or forty from now
all matter making up my body collapsing
into a thick & nameless dark
without your bouquet of perspiration
& crushed almonds following
at least unbearably close behind.
there’s a heat wave in brooklyn. my sweat
wipes off the eyebrows you painted on.
with a little cool water from the bathroom sink,
you dab the rest clean
before you kiss me goodnight.
the sky blue like the robin’s egg which is blue like the sky
for Moofy
all day i have done nothing. in my sleep i am buried
by the shore, one of those pranks played by loved ones
leaving a decapitated head to hover above sand. a gag
or a kind of mercy, the swivel of bone & blood rush
with no place else to go. all your decisions already made
for you. the tides rise, waves blunter than a bullseye.
this is where you stand, backlit, rolling on the balls
of your heels leaving imprints of imperfect little moons
around my makeshift tomb. i remember this as more
romantic, a prayer so small it was only rumored. i won’t die
hillside as i’d always imagined but where salt & sea make
a fine cocktail for a final meal. you are not yet dead but i am
already lonely. now is as good a time as any to take inventory.
the fireflies blipping like traffic lights, their glow grown gauche
between the curved glass of mason jars. the woodchuck who
emerges from the tunnels he’s built below our garden & waddles
around grieving, seeing a land he no longer recognizes & a hole
he can’t squeeze himself back into. a labyrinth of sorrow,
a museum of tiny pleasures left to collapse. the purest of exile
—sorry, no credit, don’t ask. the robins sing
in their disbelief, the moths too great a burden for one lifetime
will never see what sunlight does to a river. still, the little gremlins
strain to reach a new moon on wings too paltry to break even
the atmosphere. the stars oscillate in their panic as summer
plies her trade towing a cold stone to the flat & flush heat
of an anvil. you point your finger & my eyes follow to find
a pale blue broken egg cradled by the grass on your lawn.
i wish i hadn’t seen that, i tell you. when one thing falls, nothing
left but the next. then, as if summoned, rain. just a trickle at first
then enough that it’s embarrassing. the two of us waiting it out
two hundred years ago in a horse-drawn buggy, the Deluge frigid
as a witch’s fingertips. or at the courthouse as pigeons fluttering
& flinging droplets to the sidewalk, eyes for only ourselves,
stomping the steps like the teeth of a piano. the terrible love
where there was once only dark matter. someday i will build
a tub so big it will gather all the falling drops. i will climb inside
that tub & i will mix the cold rain with water from the faucet
i run hotter than my skin can stand.
Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a writer from Brooklyn & the author of murmurations (YesYes Books, 2025). He believes in a Free Palestine & thinks you should too.
