DOOR TO A WAR I NEVER KNEW

Javelin honeyed in a gladiator’s blood, smoke masking

the sun with its cloak of slow owls, nurse praying over

a man whose ears and tongue have met blade—leave me.

My mind has little desire for you, you, and you, yet you all

insist like fog, like a complaint you stay. So stay and leave

the leaving to me, past this place with weather the smell

of iron, the sky heavy as weapons I’ve never held.

The farthest sight is the serrated underbite of cityscape

erect on the horizon, high rises pleated with suicides.

No one feels unsafe or loved in this fluorescence

of small privacies. Sky pocked with skiffs of gaslight,

what promises mount the work-hammered spines

beneath you? Here be fortunes and fortresses.

Who could turn their back to them and survive?