With a bullet, sparrow voices \
Michael J. Pagán
On summer nights, laundry
& the lighted windows hit by cars;
their searchlights like teeth; the clickings
of the tree bark outside as
the night grows older: by the pulses
of blood, by irregular hearts beating, by
us stealing conversations from
the people outside, by the freeway
overpass to the airport, by the fire
people nights. To us, the night was
always indestructible, & us, in our
cardboard crowns, we listened along
with the cast-iron fan & air
conditioning smells, & metal & wood clunking
“Deportation,” through its clenched teeth
while our bodies thought aloud,
like acrobats caught by the abdomen, whispering
back “Exile.” We loved from our buildings.
That’s how we learned dreams mean
worse than silences when invisible, gone or never
answered. So we invented the hand webs & finger
jams housing our hands, like oceans
pressed into leaves, I saw the wings with eyes,
you said. You tightened, downward around my
fingers, shoulders pulled down, ankles
together, feet in a knot, their tight, foot-binding
songs our armor & boots. Then we opened
like needles in a laughter, realizing we
still had enough room for skin & the spectacles
of breathing. We were an actual place, until
our city stripped us of the night &
its suggestions in favor of the actual
concerns of our time as pistol shots
sparrow our breathing, our
voices & we realized we were just too
naked, two shit stagehands in some clumsy,
don’t-give-a-fuck re-enactment
of two hostages bound & gagged until our
two bodies remembered that it was all
a love show. “Love.” Scribbled over
a thousand times, utterly black, & no one
feeling sad for us.
~~~~~
Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Michael J. Pagán spent four years (1999-2003) in the United States Navy before (hastily) running back to college during the spring of 2004. He currently resides in Lake Worth, Florida, with his wife and daughter, where he continues to work on his poetry, short fiction, nonfiction and a collaborative novel. He is a co-founder of 100 Miles & Running – A Collective and also maintains a blog of all his published work: The Elevator Room Company.