Usher
By Kevin Young
Make of me
a mercy—
This stone-eyed world
I can’t see past
to what waits
in the wings
____
The dead wake for nothing.
Or wake & nothing
is still there.
The wide meadow. Deep grass.
Distant ships.
The far fires
Only glimpsed
from a distance.
Nothing looks back,
blinks twice.
____
Beg the ghosts—
be gone.
Bid the dawn
so long—
Let the day darken
your bones.
Let the dusk
usher us
into it—hail
the thick dark
alongside me,
singing.
____
Finish
me like a fish.
____
Easy then being nothing
wanting more. Now,
a small something,
I want only
an end
to the suffering—
to quit this knocking—
like a boat lashed
tight to the dock, tossed
during storm—
either cut me
aloose, sent
wild to sea, or yank
me inland—dry-docked—
spare me this long
longing, tugging
at the leash, moored
in between.
____
I believe no more
in nothing—not yet
in something—
the severed wing
of a bird in the road
still stirs, lifted
by wind.
