Torschlusspanik (Already the Sun) by John James


 
 
Somewhere off the coast of our own

defeated world I approach
the mangroves, blooming. The wings

 

of a hummingbird

repeatedly buzzing. An orgy of rosebuds

shedding their dew. Tonight, another
silvery operation

 

in a room with broken light. Your brother, he lets me

 
turn on the night. Lets the dark fall over my eyes
 

so when I close them it’s booming. The hum of something
being torn apart.
The sound the sky makes.

 
I taste the soldering iron, a .45 nestled

safely on my tongue. It stinks

 

of seared skin. A cheek’s inside
smoking. If tonight

I die whistling, if I leave you

singing through my teeth, will you

 

remember me fondly? Will you scatter me freely
on a mound of frozen dirt?

 

Already the flies are swarming.
Already the sun shines

 
blankly on your chest.

It is almost too bright now, this room.

 

What’s left of the forest closes
swiftly around us

and I’m learning the halls
 

of my family’s smoldered home.

 
 
 
 
 
John James is the author of Chthonic, winner of the 2014 CutBank Chapbook Award. His work appears or is forthcoming in Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Best New Poets 2013, and elsewhere. He lives in Washington, DC, where he serves as Graduate Associate to the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.