you dream you exhale tsunamis,
erupt below the surface like an earthquake
but you are a blanket soaked in urine
draped across my face, and i feign
drowning so you dream i’m gone
forever; i’m here, my mouth a monster
from before the movies, ancient,
the kind of beast that knows how
to erase storms from history books.
in my dreams, we’ve both risen from depths,
broken the surface, turned in our secret
fears—my mother’s unforgiving glare,
for example—and press our chests
together, feel our heat, and drown together

--

i am the cataloguer of wind, a handprint
swirled in the wet
clouds, a handprint
wearing someone’s grandmother’s new gloves,
the ones she bought from that market
just south of the skyline where they sell
apples so crisp you wonder
if ice crystals that form on the wings
of jets in those moments right after missiles
taste like history
or if the handprint catches
the outside of my cheek and fuses
us, together, separated
by how slow we are to tally each gust

--

I am a heartbeat, I remember
my grandmother whispering
years after she died.

At our funerals, dreams
are more rain storm
than honest memory,

which is to say that they
lie to us about which sky
is above, and which sky

our feet root into, darken
memories like a flashlight
flicked off and on forever,

warning us, calling us, or
if we’re lucky, forgiving us

--

If you stand with your feet buried
several inches under the snow the ghost
of your mother’s grandmother can touch
your toes and speak about the belly-warmth
of fresh-baked bread with just a touch
of butter or honey or that lovely fig
spread you remember from a toddler’s table,
and how you slid your fingers into the jar
when she turned her back to pour
another cup of coffee or tea, and
here’s the secret: both your mother
and your mother’s grandmother
knew the whole time, smiled, and let
the sweetness be yours for you alone.

--

on the third of April in Minnesota
our great-grandfathers hold
a wet railing on a bridge, stable
against the wind pushing into
their faces and risking flight to water
below. The bridge’s girders support
its joists beneath their feet, and when
my great-grandfather turns to yours,
he uses the word load-bearing, so
your great-grandfather nods, says yes,
and sets his legs strong, holds his hips
low, adds that we are all load-bearing,
that April is load-bearing, but we will
hold the weight, push back the wind

--

because horticulture is the pretense of god,
because god is the pretense of control,
because control is a mother’s hand pressed
on your chest when you imagine your lungs
have collapsed and all you feel is the fear
that human internal combustion
is a medical condition because no one
knows how easily our bodies collapse
into one another when all we want is weeping,
because hands are flesh and flesh weighs
more than we could ever give it credit for,
because punk music is the vibration of our bones,
because our bones are the last to turn to earth,
because we cultivate earth, because we call it god

--

it’s clear that on every Friday, you’ve forgotten
to let your dog greet you at the door, tongue
lashed, side-to-side, mouth split, as if laughing,

because you hold your own mouth tight,
a trampoline of fury, but if only you’d release
just once, stroke his furry back with fingertips,

if only you’d unholster your pistol and drop
its weight from your hips, you’d feel your hips
quiver as easily as the pup jittering for one more

touch, one more high-pitched jumble of love:
are you a good boy? yes, you are; yes, you are.
but you’ve walked past—canine ignored, or

nonexistent—and the weight remains clenched
to your hips, your tongue, because you’ve forgotten

--

There’s a phone call, or a phone ringing,
and you consider answering it, or not
answering it, and you wonder if it’s magic,
not because you don’t understand the glory
of technology but because magic remains
magic no matter how many electrodes
touch tips like fingers inside a tiny box
which only goes to show that I don’t
really understand the glory of technology
or if magic is simply a matter of ignorance,
and, yes, I speak of ignorance in only the good
way, the way that says we can’t understand
everything, and that maybe the phone call is the voice
of god, that you should have answered all along

--

the future is a figment of my imagination
and don’t you dare swim the river of erasure
because my mind has the power of drought,
so if you even consider touching the barrel

of your rifle to tomorrow’s tomorrow I will
rescind my dream-you, send tomorrow’s you
to yesterday, the day before you thought
horror was the only answer, and while my

threats contain no weaponry, they are filled
with the liquid ammunition of ancestors
who suffered and dreamed and loved to make
this moment more than just maniacal fantasy

so, my friend, it’s a simple request, a shared dream,
to bare-hand tomorrow; we will love you

My Songs [Sonnets] for Terrorists #30-38

Brian Baumgart