I Am Trying to Love the Whole World
By Jenny Browne
but you can’t keep everything.
You can only enter the sleepless
rooms repeating, more slowly
& in alphabetical order
the names of birds: albatross bunting cormorant dove. Albatross
bunting cormorant
instead of your dead friends
don’t you mean?
Mean egret. Mean grackle. Mean humming.
Keep humming. Keep jay.
Say kingfisher. Say loon.
Say despite the racoons screeching
all night like blown timing belts
high in the trash trees
while the skeletal fence cats carry on
their cage match over moonlight.
Say Katie Rhonda Shimi T I mean
mocking mocking
& still we haven’t finished
cleaning out your studio, your drawers
full of heart-shaped catalpa leaves
sketches of standing ovations
for melancholic rock stars, charm
bracelets & the chiseled gray
mountains of Spain, over which
we had yet to fly.
& your laugh like an ambulance,
& your laugh like the elephant grass.
