elegy
        (or, the new year immediately fucking breaks our deal about keeping
        everyone I care about alive)

We love who we can love, and the rest
stay ghosts. I can't remember
now if the dead become angels

in the popular mythology, or if we just
rise up like soap bubbles in the cold
and go. There is space in my bones

for only so much grief. The rest
has to wait for sleep, when the long
and recent dead can reach back

to pull my braided hair or sing
like they never did. All the candles
burning down to the metal, the radiator

singing its dumb water song. Let's bomb
this echo playground, this salted field.
What's there to stop us but the dirt

wearing our names. A first
communion skirt. The dust
in my lungs. Knock it

out of me. Say the dead do not come back
ever. Say we earn our funeral clothes
every time we kiss. What country

is this? Whose shoes
am I wearing? When
did it get so cold?

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Copyright © 2015 Marty McConnell All rights reserved
from Court Green
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission