Elegy Poem: MOUNT PLEASANT, UTAH / JANUARY 5 / 1:43 AM, by Nate Connolly

For Heath, now four years gone from my world.

I.

one boy tossing language into a crevice

another introducing rapture to his fist
another wracked by sick convulsions
another swallowing the vineyard’s gift
another abandoned in the blackthorns
another paler than the all-seeing moon
another thieving his mother’s rings
another slim as an angel’s fingernail
another who speaks only exonyms
another—

wildest profanities
amid the sagebrush

noise carries. Where doors would be
there are gaps in the wall, impossible
to close. At night, conversations
drift to other rooms. The tongue
mutates if left with the same voices
too long. Catches their ticks and rhythms
like a common cold. Howls leak
and accompany the nighttime gossips
snitching in the dark. Others, still,
perturb the boundaries of dreamscape.
A scream is a communication, an utterance
past the scope of language. All communication
amounts to shuffling knowledge, here
a redundant enterprise, like startled birds
fleeing boys that limp and wince each step.
We all share the knowledge. Wailing
or silent, we all mouth the same word.

II.

unravel the eyesight / desist / until the foul hunger of this multiverse
sates itself on the black / and between the arcs of being, we collide

being as time / instantaneous sagebrush / spark-splattered kindling
ripe and ready for the meat / I gorge myself on the unhinged

there is no object without a making / nor a making without cost
I was not hungry / but here I came with the sole intent to eat

III.

you asked him to pray and he wrote you a gospel
you told him that the rain isn’t free and he invented thirst
you shepherded him and he taught the wolves to howl
you crowned him and he curled up to sleep on cobblestones
you gave him eyes and he had to choose:

would they watch
would they close
or would they weep?