Moon Drawing Water, No Lacquer Basket

Night unzips
trains and buses from Belmont Avenue. Dawn again

like headlights trumpets past
and grief steps on.

In the bathroom, night sky tops Irving Berlin
tomorrow-tinted

while boys stumble, obviously unwounded, to the bar,
dripping cloth

pressed
between their hands. Every season passes through.

Irving Berlin will never visit Saigon,
never see dogs on the cathedral steps.

Telemachus will never stay in Syracuse
with its never-empty streets.

I’ll never meet anyone at Sidetrack,
never join Food Not Bombs.

Irving Berlin and the end of the world
will never hold hands

on the train ride back to Holiday Inn,
while the sea, never stirring

Séamus Fisler (he/they) is a queer poet and madperson from Chicago. His work previously has been published in a bathroom stall in Austin, Texas and in Night Music Journal.