Still Life with Lack of Nesting
The oaks in New Orleans were restless, their roots
like fat fingers rummaging under sheets, pushing sidewalk
up to sea level. The streetcar was free—or at least, we cheated
our way into making it free. Every morning,
you’d point out cardinals tangled in the powerlines
while we waited for permission to leave (y)our home.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Look, this one’s your ancestor. That one’s my friend lost to cancer.
I still don’t know what to make of a species whose males
stick out like a thumb of blood across a landscape canvas.
I listen—but still don’t recognize their calls.
I find rhythms, urgency, but can’t understand.
This is how you and I felt sometimes meeting strangers.
This is how sometimes we felt around each other.
Lugging home a hunk of beef for you one night,
I heard music drift across the street like snow.
A string trio. Someone’s porch. Families
gathered respectfully apart, like gravestones.
For your sake, I tried not to notice the children.
I followed you away from their sounds.
Overwinter
1.
I’m leaving yet another apartment
the way I found it: egg-shell white,
the same loop-pile carpet
of my childhood bedroom,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀mildew
lingering along the baseboards
if you know where to look.
2.
The apartment complex pond
is a battlefield.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Grass attacked by scat.
3.
The day I decide to leave,
I watch two geese
flock from nowhere,
circle the pond, and touch down
in the water.
4.
This pond, this potion
of cigarette butts
and Hostess wrappers, is their home.
5.
Or it is a rest stop, tourist trap
for birds biding their time
until the freedom of another winter.
6.
Or they have no home.
Or nowhere is home
for the ever-moving.
Or a body is a nowhere for homing.⠀
7.
I was born from a leaving.
I sweat in the same denim
my father wore
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀while immigrating.
I ask it
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ to explain why
I never stay seated at parties,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I prime my chest for leaving.⠀⠀⠀⠀
8. ⠀⠀⠀⠀
These days, heat makes time
irrelevant.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Suburbia’s grass
so abundant, geese overwinter,
forget how to leave. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
9.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Come summer, I’ll be gone.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Cardboard boxes slid
behind another dresser.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
10. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Goslings skim back and forth
like a copy machine.
Tufts of fluff pursuing father. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
11.⠀⠀
At the back,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀their mother guides
the straggler
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀I love the most.⠀⠀⠀
Ryan Varadi a Chicago-based workshop instructor and poet. He received his MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he was a staff reader for Ecotone Magazine. He is the winner of Frontier Poetry’s 2023 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, SWING, and Cherry Tree, among others.