David M. Brunson

Listening to Piazzolla, Tierra del Fuego


 
1. 

City draped in the muffled score of snow.
Hanging from the power lines, icy quarter-rests.
Evening frosts the window. A hand on black keys;
a minor chord, a flurry of crows.  

 

2.  

The dark ship undocks.
I drift across
the jagged strait.
A horizon swallows
the peopled sound.
Through the vague mist
a ghost sail flaps.
A man with a snifter
inks the yellowed charts
of this frozen night
as, by the window,
I wait for water
(or is it light?)
to find me. 

 

3.  

On the branch beyond my window:
a crow furls its black sails with care,
as if a sudden motion would cause the universe
of grand pianos to slam shut.

 

David M. Brunson's poems and translations have appeared in or are forthcoming from Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, Booth, On the Seawall, DIAGRAM, The Bitter Oleander, Nashville Review, Asymptote, Copper Nickel, Washington Square Review, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is the editor and translator of A Scar Where Goodbyes Are Written: An Anthology of Venezuelan Poets in Chile, forthcoming from LSU Press.