Jovi Schnell, Moon Seed Dataspace (acrylic and flashe on canvas), 2017
Love doesn’t want this body. A sparrow’s in the tree,
then he’s gone—chasing steeples.
In black-and-white photos of an old
apiary, bees crown
the keeper’s head, sugary swarm,
blur of graying flight I imagine the third
child I’m homesick
for is—is motherless in night’s cold cove, is
nameless in a garden of stars.
Like my mother’s humming—aren’t
there sparrows left, there aren’t any sparrows left.
When I dust my daughter’s dollhouse,
painted bougainvillea on pink walls—soon, she’ll cast
it away. When another child suicide bomber is blown
up by remote control. Tell me,
is there a different word (or world)
for light or lonely in the darkening? Is
light ever alone? Tell me there’s a man somewhere
weighting a calf’s neck, submerging its wild
kicking & sobs under the river water.
The bells around the collar singing
memories I never lived—this child drawing a bee,
calling it treasure—body’s honey thrum.
Somewhere in the world you might be knifed
for what moves inside you—it’s true, the human
body gives off an imperceptible glow, mine
a candle walking the halls to quiet my children’s sleep
whimpers. The moon is. I ask the angel present
at my birth—are you the same hungered one
who’ll attend my death?
The moon slides away. The night never ends, a black
horse quiet at the field’s edge.