Halo: A Corona Pastoral

Abstract

Halo: A Corona Pastoral Steven Leyva (bio) 1. The accordion of icicles has paused its torch songand the snow-blind cardinal sings the red from its back into the dawn’s plaintive daylight, which rubs a thumb acrossthe sagging gutters of row homes and alleys without consideringa single lily. What is cruel here? No favor given to the green hillsscratching the belly of Cumberland, MD. Abandoned mills kick in their sleep like dreaming dogs. No meritocracycan save Ellicott City from another flood. The Orioles’off-season has all of Baltimore in a beer glass. Does anyone rememberthe name of the last mayor sent to jail? At the car wash down the block, graffiti separates one water from another. O Godof the voided year, of the indifferent sunlight, give usthe daily bread of quarantine: the longing to be touchedby a letter in the mail, the bald cry in the bathroom, the music of snow. [End Page 8] 2. By a letter in the mail, the bald cry in the bathroom, the music of snow,love has learned its last arpeggio. What good is it to singin the empty amphitheater of winter? And yet the sparrow drags the diva of spring back again. Encore after encore. The blue jays evicting the otherbirds from a hollowed-out gourd, the inconsistent applause of cookwarecoaxed from the back of a cabinet, the exhaust fan whistling a round. Love is a chord we cannot pluck out of morning air. Not alone. Every instrumentmust be touched, held aloft on the crown of a shoulder, kissed, or left mute.Old tabula rasas of bay windows manifest our breath, asking, Won’t youwrite your name? Anything to be touched. The chime of notifications no one confuses for a love song, but notice the sincere chorus of crocusaccompanying the crepe myrtle in the yard, and the stubborn rosemarybullying the garden, and the scrape of the postal truck weighed with late mail,all these altars burning in our eyes. Look at how much we don’t know about loneliness. [End Page 9] 3. All these altars burning in our eyes. Look at how much. We don’t know about lonelinesssought. Cities no longer coughing on suvs. Let me clear my throat. The ringletof lampposts on Main Street as useless as a rosebush in winter. The Sold Out signshanging on the grocery shelves. Give me a break. The land makes a hymnwithout lyrics. No sense in mumbling. Shenandoah sung like a ghost of hallelujahin the praise the Potomac negotiates. Every kind of hum arrives on the bonesof derelict bridges below Harper’s Ferry. Rust by any other name. The dead stars hang like a DJ’s poster saying Coming Soon. And the turntablesof sun and moon scratch the sky’s vinyl. How can we not dancein the kitchen alone, making toast, frying an egg? Every day we are searchingfor the perfect outfit, a few fly boots, a coat that won’t quit, to enter the clubof memory, slipping the bouncer a 20-dollar bill from our childhood. The petty cashbegged at a parent’s knee. Anticipation. The fear of walking home empty- handedafter asking for a lover’s number. The deft touch of a porch light across the cheek. [End Page 10] 4. After asking for a lover’s number, the deft touch of a porch light across the cheekis like horizon’s blushing grin in the daily aubade of dawn. Amen. After asking for a lover’s number, the deft touch of a porch light across the cheekis like the anglerfish, whose luminosity and ugliness coexist. Amen.After asking for a lover, number the deft touches of a porch light across the cheek.Is there enough to fill the wolf ’s mouth and see what it eats? Amen,after asking for a lover’s number. The deft touch. A porch light across the cheekis like any other kiss. Tender but never enough. Shameless. Amen.After asking for a lover, number each deft touch. A porch lights. Across a cheek-bone...