Santino DallaVecchia
Canto #3
The lifter of songs in the morning begged me,
“Do not take down the lamps”
And I responded, Lifter, Minister, Whisperer,
what are lamps?
Remember, the night is when the sky comes down and brings darkness out of space to cover up the world
Once I sat in the ocean
looking out from a castle built for the drowning and in this submerged forest, I looked out to somewhere else
The stars are behind my eyelids now, and I will hold them
as long as I can while the terrible face wells up in the deep,
as they go blank at the edge of the forest, turning ebon from staring
so long through the division between This and That
Here we will look forward into the twinkling sea of dawn at
the planets
I am the prince of the western shore, but it is only a name,
for my lover has no need of wings; he
was flight before anyone else was
there to see flying– he is flying when
naming itself becomes redundant–
Spiraling Introversion in Solar Colors
You crystallize before me and then your skin starts melting and
sloughs off into the confines of our air
revolting its bonds
becoming patches of light
Incandescence, why have you come?
Deny my name, they said you said, but I can’t–
we were drinking chocolate milk, and then you descended
somewhere so deep you had to take off your body
The princes laid down their crowns and wrapped themselves in
robes of plaid where your eyelids parted
And I saw the sun born to consume itself and obliviate
like two loves inevitably becoming headstones
You are the tide if the tide were always coming in
You are the ocean if we all realized the true size of the force behind that tide
Friend, I’m sorry you have to die so soon after your matriculation
I’m sorry
I rip open your white-hot ribcage, and then, I’ve found it–
at your core, the universe
Floating
suspended
a mote of dust that Is
and you, dying, that Are
Santino DallaVecchia is a poet and essayist from Michigan, and serves as editor for See Spot Run, a small literary journal.