Last year’s June brides are setting out lacy cakes to defrost. Paper
plates and napkins for a picnic-anniversary. The first year is made of paper.

“My silence you undo like the moment the globes of overhead light in a ballpark
_                _shut
their humming wattage—and the stars begin to swirl,” she wrote on a valentine
_                _of paper.

The smell of snow, memory is a fabric dense with perfumes: Father shoveling
white heaps that cower like strayed sheep; I fold into sleep made of paper.

A man lives in a curfew-town on the western side of a wall. When he walks
he is walking in someone else’s dream: slow rückenfigur clutching the evening
_                _paper.

Arms of lilac shrub lift in a churchyard. He woke to the thought of lilacs.
The work of grief is perennial: flowering in the given month, unfurling our leaves
_                _of paper.

But this bird doesn’t sing: caught between storm glass and screen, half sun-
_                _bleached, half
cardinal wing. The dusty specimen into a brown bag, poor lich-house made of
_                _paper.

“So sweet is thy discourse to me…when you quiet you are giving darkness
to night’s clockwork—and the stars sing,” he answered on an airplane made of
_                _paper.

Tell me the city doesn’t glimmer with broken glass, disaster won’t rain upon
_                _them.
Tell me the air is filling with ticker-tape, trombones, victory of softly falling
_                _paper.

Remember me in a future April when rivers are the color of tea in the Carolina
Lowcountry and where Easter recipes are lettered on handmade paper