Forecast & Vigil

Abstract

57 KYLE MARBUT Forecast & Vigil  Forecast My superpower is feeling sad about things before they happen: my first kiss, winter sunsets, sunrise in general, telling you I’m scared of who I’ve been, running out of laundry detergent, birthdays, a summer spent in bed, two degrees Celsius, the day my cat dies and I bury him without flowers, the sea returning to its bed—the valley where I live, primordial ocean floor. The creek meets its banks, ponds bloom in the sandlot—speechless birds crowd black cherry trees, ruffling 58 feathers between strokes of lightning and the answering crash. I count four silent miles on my fingers. Somewhere a patch of grass smolders—somewhere a sycamore splits and flames, fountaining blackbirds. A puddle swallows my ankles, the storm drains can’t keep up with all this sky—passing cars arc gutter water into my eyes waves lap my thighs rainwater rises slow as cooling glass islands disappear I hold the sky -blue umbrella like a bowl overflowing raised to my brimming lips I cannot contain everything I am myself alone a child floats by on an oak door translating Hamlet into water into Ophelia words pour off clean pages my dress 59 a raft water-laden and drifting my dress a mermaid tail emerald-scaled inlaid with pearls a willow grows aslant the new seafloor branches sprawling underwater my brothers crowd the crown dueling for their castaway birthright ramshackle driftwood barge fistfight over gyres of jetsam and uprooted picnic tables white-water storm surge claims the coastline the eastern seaboard becomes open water landlocked corn country becomes beachfront property becomes open water I always wanted to live in a beach house my father is the ocean my mother is the sea I am tide-borne I am sinking Hurricane-force, black sky—when will the weather learn to behave itself? I’m not calling this an apocalypse, an ending, though the flood drowns two of each species and then some, and the richest bastards cry out to breaking skies for an island timeshare in high-and-dry Colorado, and the clouds 60 do not answer. In my dreams, the new world -ocean is not barren. All the arks are empty or unbuilt—the water teems with golden mer-cheetahs and jewel-toned hermit crab-rabbits with neon shells and moray ferrets tucked into crags—and the birds are mostly the same, except they wing saltwater and sing like little whales, crowing with humpbacks at dawn, when godbeams slice the epipelagic over our submerged street, our town below sea level, block after block of houseboat shipwrecks—open doors and windows, waterlogged, all our glasses are always full of the world, no room for pessimistic air, and we never have to wash our hair again. The body is governed by water. Can you swim? The water is governed by water. Come again? I can’t hear over all this storm, this icemelt—Antarctica cracking into continents, the planet jingling like a glass of coke. The icebergs are just icebergs. The water is just the world, now. I hope you said yes about the swimming— remember, I carried you to the deep end once by your armpits, and let go, and you flailed, gasped, learned: 61 You don’t have to hold yourself. Don’t worry—the water will catch you. Don’t worry—the water won’t come here anyway. 62 Vigil Meet me in the garden so I can weave us crowns from grass and clover, a stem twisted over a blade around tiny blossoms till the ends disappear . This is how I claim my kingdom, in the sunroom at moonrise, rain painting half-shadows on the thin glass walls. No one does what I ask, so I tell my subjects to pile pale white doll shoes and the black paper wings of ladybugs at the foot of this slow-rocking swing-bench, my throne. They come to me from far reaches, bearing slivers of dusty lace from an old maid’s wedding dress, panes of glass from rose windows in churches at the bottoms of lakes, boats of broken porcelain glazed with desert rain. All this they bring in through...