Triptych

Last time, ruined by the snap of hickory switches

           from someone else’s younger years, we let ourselves

be ridden down along the hillsides’ every slope.

           We fastened superstitions to our bayonets and made

a barricade against the baddest of our dreams,

           the gods pumping a semaphore of mimicry

from every shard of broken mirror in the county.

           So next time we’ll brush nectar on the lintels

in the place of blood and next time we’ll bring satchels

           of ruddle in the place of torches, play finger-puppets

in the Winter Palace drawing rooms, and lie

           —all winded and enlaced—an era long

in the floret-crackled meadows, where no one

           has even once dreamt of a design for mausoleums.

But this time I’ve got only minutes until sundown

           and this pullover, which is made more with how

you’ve dusted it when you’ve been carrying a smile

           in your mouth the whole day long and which now breaks,

completely, like a seiche across the hall light pooling up

           the doorway of your place in all the shivering gusto

of a conked, preposterous idea like this one.

George Kovalenko is a poet whose work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. A recipient of fellowships from New York University and the Saltonstall Foundation, he lives and teaches in New York City.