Jaime Forsythe: Two Poems

INSTRUCTIONS FOR HEAVY WEATHER

after a collaboration with Alice Burdick

You egg cup, you balloon animal,
shatter and burst, dilute without
fuss. Two celestial bodies nod
hello while a bucket of paint overflows
in the rain. Beach your testimony
for a tried-and-true myth. Fiddlehead
your hair for the ceremony? Not enough.
In the wet glow, ghost your misery.
Freeze the clutch inside the hi-hat’s cloud.

Anything can be a hat. Clean and dress
and meet me at the back of my head.
Remove the small sac from my nape,
the one I was saving for a hurricane,
along with the petrified fruit in the cellar.
Wild or cultivated are your choices for supper.
The speeches, the rice, the gaping
sky: a cavity to be closed with stray eyelashes.
Watch the porch light’s seizure, silver moths.
Wait for everything to stop.

SKIN TO FISH

Palm skims the length of a halved salmon,
hands cleaner than any glove. Plates
lumped with pods and shells,
cast-offs from faraway
life forms and twitching dinners.
Left behind, careful as code, false
eyelashes in a dish licked dry.
Belly slice, milky eye plucked
from its socket. What’s delicious
is arbitrary, taste of a dim
encounter. What’s forgotten:
umbrellas, slim friends
clustered in a bin. Tissue shed
from presents, bobby pins, blister
packs of birth control, headphones,
membranes, hair. The server sleepwalks
with a platter of jewel-toned tuna
and bay scallops. The chef’s hollow clap
between pieces, his bowl of water.
A plum sinking in Shochu stops
all speaking. A party where nobody comes
is a sad birthday, sparkler unlit,
kettle brimming. We missed
the parade, the concert, the busker,
the meteor shower. We prop it up
and tear it down and prop it up again.

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