MARTHA HOLLANDER
Requiem
A view of the late afternoon
city in midwinter reveals
golden slabs of the sun painted
on the hither sides of houses.
Their darkened windows throb against
the din of the light, while
the notes on the page answer black.
The open score offers a requiem
in the French manner: austere and hushed.
Under the celestial whispers
of the telephone, your voice was
thinned by painkillers, the call
costing the barest flicker of breath.
With the same bewildered softness,
the boy sopranos on my recording
scale each steep dissonance,
colder than clouds. Does it feel
like floating over the shadowed street,
easing toward a summit? Is it
higher than anyone could sing?
On the top floor of this building
shot through with the angled sun,
I go over the music again.
Closed in the prison of sleep
at the bright, attenuated
edge of twilight,
lux perpetua ,
you start rehearsing for death.
SOPHIE CABOT BLACK
Overdose
All night I hold your driven body tight
Against some quantity of quaalude. A diner's
Bad sign slides through our window to a wrist,
To the essential curve of a stocking,
