after John Ashbery

A coyote pack yipped and yowled in the dark to coordinate their hunt.
Suddenly, they went mute: the chill had caught voices in their throats.

The night she died, my great-grandmother complained she was cold.
She had howled for years for my great-grandfather, in the hope
he was sweeping bougainvillea, trimming the front hedge in moonlight.
She caught me holding the clippers upside-down as he did. I had no idea.
I wonder if she saw me or him standing there that moment, holding them.

I woke to a quiet that icicled down my throat—no chance of a word.
The polished past, slid open, was a clear night in an aluminum frame.

after John Ashbery

Pringles, Gatorade—first time eating outside in a year. Done, I put on my mask
and a Thank You trumpeted, brassy and sharp enough to have sliced my throat.
An administrator advised me to keep keeping my distance, 
                                                                                      and it dawned on me
that distance was being a masked statue, neither breathing nor batting an eye—
like when seed for finches lures a black cat over to cruise. Nature’s got to eat
and April’s crueler this year—climate broiling,
                                                                    contagion hitting the fan, strewn
not just into the atmosphere, like diced sea birds through an airplane propeller,
but also with a prop wash through consciousness—a turbulent spiral leaving
something shredded to hemorrhage midair, regardless whether in climb or fall.