They pretend not to see each other
undress

in the hazy light of the nightbulb.
He’s seen her act

a thousand times before,
and yet

there’s something fascinating
about the sadness,

the way
this next part unfolds:

she folds
his shirt, pouring into it

a memory of them, a hair,
has to stop,

set a hand
on the chest

of drawers, turn
to look at him

and reset herself.
Slavonic Dances

stir the air,
step-parents to the part

inside
she has forgotten

for now.
There is no doubt—

it is his mother
standing in the frothy light.

–E.C. Belli,
plein jeu
(Accents Publishing)

Nobody knows him. Not even she.
Sometimes though, when he can’t understand

the memory shaking her,
when she seems to have escaped a world

wild with ferocity, he thinks he loves her
more than anyone yet. She is pale, easy

to wrinkle, readable as Proust. She is long,
too long to explain. She comes

in volumes. Tomes. She is described
at length, never captured. Tangled veins

show around her nipples. Her neck is a swan’s—
she is part bird, that much he knows.

When he brings her darkness, she falls
asleep. Often, he turns her, halfway

through the night, to face him
and often, when she’s engulfed

in the dream, he cups her hands in his
and promises that together they will go

farther than either ever alone.
Tonight as he mutters again

endless words of expatriation
never to materialize,

he feels a flutter
inside the cage his fingers create,

the brush of feathers against his palms.
Infused for so long

with thoughts of a salutary journey,
she has begun to migrate without him.

–E.C. Belli,
plein jeu
(Accents Publishing)

He sleeps on her hair, she doesn’t
sleep

but imagines children
dragged to the rim

of forests and hears the dry
canticle of meadow oats

she used to walk past. Now
she lies,

eyes open, mind folded.
He sleeps.

She didn’t leave so much
to join him

as to escape
the others, she thinks.

He sleeps.
Waking doesn’t matter

now:
they’ve agreed

on the 40th
as Sunday music.

She knows
they love each other

because together
they don’t mind

when someone they love
dies.

–E.C. Belli,
plein jeu
(Accents Publishing)

And though we know the long part has ended,
we must still practice—as the trackless tides

know to tear from the shore—tearing away
from each other. And reluctantly we must

build the sickness that washes us white and ill,
for departure is as certain as the eggshell field

caught in snow and the steam off the creatures
that fill it. Frosted tree limbs, iridescent with ice

and moon, knobs solid as cast iron, glint like glass
bells. Here little spines are bent against the bluster

and feathered skulls tear with dew. There is
a savage inwardness to this kind, unconcerned

with all that is not it, an inwardness such as ours.
And how they will often burst into defense, flee

a tile of snow slipping from the roof, crumbling
though the dusty bones of mountains, and click

their claws caked in mud, raising a shrill:
it is this natural for us to practice tearing away.

Tonight, we know again the familiar pain, built
into us like winters and birds. And we know

only it will do. Tonight, we hear the heavy gravel
tilting from the pull of the undertow, wintering

tide after tide, talk of oneness and separation
like none other: it will be us without us. It will be

traveling great distances and holding each other
in mind. And holding at all. Watch as they clothe

themselves with wings, shutting their eyelids.
And after the blinking ceases, watch them sink,

like us, into feathered coffins of self, attics
of blindness, signaling to their kind: we are here.

–E.C. Belli,
plein jeu
Accents Publishing

More from plein jeu and E.C. Belli: