Copia by Erika Meitner Read Free Book Online

Fall in line
    and march to the sounds
    of a thousand backhoes
    beeping in reverse, prophesying
    omygod
&
comeholyspirit
,
    singing of everything they’ve

    taken away and razed over.
    Remember: I still believe
    we will find you in the rubble
    of the city, in the cast-off stones
    lining this place. And when
    Hannah wept she was not drunk,

    though some days I am drunk
    and do not weep, and some days
    I weep and do not drink.
    I don’t often pray, blessmyheart,
    but if I did, I would veer
    from fixed liturgy and speak

    in tongues about how much love
    I’ve plowed under waiting
    for you. One day I will crouch
    anywhere but in a pew
    and tell you that most
    origins are mysterious

    while simultaneously
    combing the crowd
    for some signal or
    synchronicity.
    The truth is
    even cities

    are ephemeral
    (Say farewell!)
    & woe to us
    if we reject
    that rule.
    The truth is

    I’m quick
    to bow down
    at the altars
    of anyone’s wild
    & imperfect feet.

A RS P OETICA WITH R ADIO A PPARATUS , T ODDLER, & D UCKS

    A local convention of ham radio operators
    at the duck pond’s gazebo have erected towers
    to try to bounce their signals off the moon.

    My son thinks their metal scaffolding
    is the Eiffel Tower—thinks all metal towers
    are the Eiffel Tower ever since we read him

    that book which features a world-traveling pig.
    We have come to feed the ducks stale potato buns.
    Every time my son tosses a hunk he is mobbed

    by ducks whose feathers glint in the light.
    They both terrify and delight him. Each duck
    has an electric blue racing stripe, a wing-feather

    the color of a vintage GTO. Pontiac may have
    gone under, but the ham radio operators tout
    survivability with their giant portable antennae.

    â€œWe can jury-rig something on any spot,”
    one guy in a fishing hat tells me, and this
    earth-moon-earth communicating

    happening just for today is apparently
    the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest
    when it comes to radiograms since the moon

    is a poor sounding board—since the moon
    is spinning and has a rough surface that disrupts
    signals. I try to explain to my son that these men

    are talking through the air, but I forget
    that he doesn’t know about air. He knows
    about outer space and understands

    that we live on earth and that the Eiffel Tower
    has something, now, to do with the ducks
    and the moon. But how to explain an element

    that’s invisible, that surrounds us, that covers
    the earth like an orange peel and keeps us alive?
    There is no wind so I tell him to spin around

    and listen. But what he hears, I know, instead
    of the swish of air shushing around his ears
    is a motley Doppler effect: ducks honking

    and the clang of these radio buffs
    tinkering with a rusting web of metal, murmuring
    to unseen strangers who only know them

    by their handles, their call signs, each letter made clear
    with a noun—Victor Whiskey X-ray Papa Foxtrot Echo—
    who, for today only, are letting passersby try out

    their equipment, send and accept real messages,
    like ONE (everyone safe here—please don’t worry),
    or TWO (coming home as soon as possible).

    These voices spilling into space, reflecting radio
    waves off the aurora borealis, off ionized trails
    of meteors, waiting for someone to pluck them
    from the darkness, decipher their code.

P ORTO , P ORTARE , P ORTAVI , P ORTATUS

    At the airport the conveyor bears small yachts shaped like luggage
    into the distance, and I am headed, when they let me pass

    through the x-ray arch, toward home. There is a distance
    sometimes greater than this between us, since you are in

    another state—gaseous, solid, liquid, light—and I admit
    I am often absent lately from whatever is happening

    in a given room. Portatus. Having been carried from one place
    to another, I will be delayed in this terminal in Akron, Ohio

    for the longest dusk, but I do not yet know this. I spend hours
    trying to puzzle out the black script