Danny Rivera
Bullets & Butter
Sorting through the debris field
—all the bullets and butter—
of the shared life that we once promised each other
(because the marriage has failed)
yet denied to uphold
reveals no tether but bruises before the eyes
(identify, in a separate room,
collateral damage),
like so many experiments before it.
Our former rituals, and any remaining days,
spent apart,
fold into and resemble
much simpler catastrophes:
an inverted cross, swinging,
from a nail on the wall; the crib in the corner,
long barren;
a heron dissolving into the wetlands;
endnotes to be cataloged.
This is a language that is no longer my own:
I struggle to speak no se puede decir
that the mornings will not recalibrate this fiction,
and I am unable to sequester light at variable speeds,
anoint grief within thirty-six frames, all decisions are final
like the pictures from our wedding album,
a record of being (
)
with other figures, those blurred outlines
long since extinguished,
like the room in which we rename desire,
a transfiguration, tongues lifted from the skin,
sweat marked off our chests, we become soft targets
and here I remain,
waiting for an uncertain peace—
Danny Rivera is the author of a poetry chapbook ANCESTRAL THROAT (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and his poetry and literary criticism have appeared in American Book Review, Washington Square Review, Superstition Review, among other journals. He received his MFA degree from the City College of New York.
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