A Million Fragile Bones, bestselling novelist Connie May Fowler’s new…
Two Poems
Angel Island
The sun looks like a white van moving
through trees. It reaches out
to dismantle the surface of the water.
Each and every skill set
that I covet
leaves me wholly open to how that sun
moves beyond the woods and into the crashing
my ribs make as I attempt
to unburden my self
from this piano full of nails. The sun moves
so slowly that you can hear
its observations singing from
the cage of day—though no one is shaming,
no one has gone unshamed; though no one is loving,
no one
has gone unloved. Every mouth
has a confession in its top drawer, every sleeve
hides a burden—
each broken call releases its humors.
The sun looks like a white van escaping
through trees. I pull the focus back—
I do not see the fear,
I do not measure the circumference; I have not
lived up to the expectations
of grandeur I fed my heart as a child.
The sun looks like a white van burning in the trees.
Ossuary
The body leaves the body—standing in the street
unable to find its self.
This is too much for the trees and so they fade,
abscising away curtly into disquiets
of traffic. I squander
all the small hours in pursuit of fire, heat
pushing its orbit over me
as I dig past shoes and wallets and books;
my noise preserving each moment
that the wind removes.
I cut this for my children
and will live in it forever. I cut this for my children
and it will live forever—in the street,
unable to find a self.
This nonstop customization of human discontent
is in the music we make; the wonder,
the knifepoint, the eyes
wide-open to descent—which may
or may not appear, but bearing witness—
as nothing can hold its
center. The body leaves the body unambiguous.