he spits saliva into bottles containing ships / ponders how far his DNA can take him / the ink on his divorce still glinting / aspires to be stately / in ways he fell short as man of the house / a term he waves away like stale smoke / he breaks his teeth on pearls / folds into carpets tongues lash at his ankles / he’s on the fast track he tells himself / look at him go / stretches his legs his smile scalding the earth / sunlight leaks in through the blinds like a fugitive / then vanishes behind trucks groaning past / shadows lick corners crevices / this tenderfoot divorcee sequestered / draws his silhouette without a body / the skill of the unseen he quarantines thirst / siphons hunger / hasn’t invented a polite word for crave yet / cups his hands catches fireflies who turn to ash / when they lose their glow / his mouth claps abruptly apologies that crack like gunshots / he chases ghosts imbrued with entrails membranes fish eyes / spits the remains in a bucket / his shirt is sodden from what he calls busy work / rowing the soil / he has no shame / he has no shame / walks through walls his limbs cut the shape of a keyhole / his lopsided grin would flip a canoe / laughs as he kicks the surf / he knows the way home the north star twirling twirling / hums with wild abandon corn straw clamped between his gums / he smacks his lips relishes the last sweet swan dive of summer / when the heat’s about to break / catches his breath without repose / releases the weight of planets / punctures a needle’s eye to thread them in the sky / a reaction to change / is still evolution / moths drink the tears of sleeping birds / that fact is implanted here to tell him something useful / the aviary door creaks he noses it open & open & open as he flies he sings
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Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, a Tin House Writers Workshop alumnus, and was long listed for the 2020 Palette Poetry Emerging Poet Prize. He served as Assistant Director for Polyphony Lit’s Summer Scholars Program and is currently a poetry reader and contributor for the Adroit Journal. His work has appeared or will soon in wildness, North American Review, Colorado Review, THRUSH, Passages North, RHINO, Iron Horse Literary Review, Cherry Tree, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his cat, Dilla.
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