Andrew Ruzkowski
Weather is a hollow voice
soaked pale in this wind
Clouds melt
through each legsome path begins
It is still
It is still this winter and
the same snow coils round the city
Small mountains form
in the corners of your eyes
The only thing rising is
vapor extracted from the body
The soulmaybe
Atmanor a singleclosed fish eye
frozen in that blue lake
It can see me
and it can see the snakes
in your gut
Twistedyes
But this gaze is something special
To see the insides of others
or a face in every twig
And I am still breathing chimneys
each morning with stone shod feet
The ice is a seahorse in our windowpane
I wish I could show youeverything
Not what is new
yet
We walk toward the same horizon
when the snow falls
and sticks to us
It is perfect
Whatever it iswe call water in magnificent bloom
The sky’s busy hands moving stars Westthis weather’s dying technique
I am ghost shaped and breathing
We couldn’t find the right spice but survived nonetheless
A little boat had drifted through the kitchen
and then we heard the news that someone had died
a perfect stranger
Though this speaks to us and compounds our wandering
What is left between a dead tongue and the air
Can this be a black bird simply on the tree branch
We love to find fish in our dreams
What things seem half-sunk in a shallow harbor
If I were a better lover I would cook pears for you
Andrew Ruzkowski lives and writes in Chicago. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, The Bakery, [PANK], Midwestern Gothic, The Seattle Review, Willows Wept Review, The Camel Saloon, Emerge Literary Journal, Radar Poetry, and Parable Press, among others. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, a Best of the Net award, and was a finalist for the 2012 Atlantis Award and the 2012 Kay Murphy Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, A Shape & Sound, is available from ELJ Publications. His first full-length collection, Things that Keep Us from Drifting, is forthcoming from Another New Calligraphy. He also serves as the reviews editor for Poets’ Quarterly and as an assistant editor for Black Tongue Review.