FACELESS

Faceless

I couldn’t see you there. So much time had gone by,

that my memory fails to put things right.

I can’t place you, in your own face. Your lips seem different, set against

saying what it is about you I’ve missed.

I press you—if it’s really you—for how you’ve been since

the lockdowns, how time got away from us.

With all your old energy and more than I remember,

you tell me you’re writing poetry now,

that you’ll write me, too, when there’s time. When it’s time.

When you were down and out, it bounced you back

to place yourself in relation to how hard it’s been and lighthearted you

you must be, to strike that perfect balance.

Going Off Script

I hadn’t the nose for it. To follow the smoke, the flow

of mists from peaks to valleys… I couldn’t.

Too far, they take me back. Too often, memories like that

reduce me to ashes, burning so deep.

The rains tap at my windows. Petals brush the puddles,

the sun paints me in another corner

of the earth, the moon inks my phasing in and out with it,

and I find tears of yours staining the page

I’d promise to turn for good. At my desk, all I can do is waver.

Our word then as now has been paper thin.

Turning it over, as I have every stone, there you were,

your imprint a blur that’s been bleeding through

before our love had been bled dry. I find myself in your footsteps

more often than my own. I feel my way

through your wisdom, though the day goes darker and darker,

as though there’s no end in sight, only the

beginning returning to us, the sense of promise

dispersing what I’d come to be sure of.

With you, it’s never been so uncertain. With you, my days

sink under their own weight, the wait too much

to bear. With you, it’s a fog where there’s no coming back the

same way, even if I post signs along

the path. The trouble with that is I don’t know the language

one day to the next, let alone, the script.

Returning means deciphering both in one, when I hadn’t

the first clue to crack what I meant to you.

The rain’s pouring now. It’s likely the windowpane won’t hold.

It’s hell, how it pops, how the glass melts down.

Heartbeats

Heartbeats, in which the soul drums, upon which love plays its part,

will you keep time when I’m left at your loss?

Heartbeats, I feel you at my throat, choking back the tears

meant for my love’s eyes alone. I hear

the echo of hoofbeats as my soul grows more and more distant,

driven off its course scored into the stars.

Heartbeat, answer for what’s been decided when I wasn’t listening.

Speak for my love though it’s been spoken for.

Tell me what the oracle broke off midsentence, breaking

for me instead a branch of dead laurel.

Take this heart and clear the waters I muddied, getting into

trouble with the unseen authorities.

Heartbeat, the path is for the both of us, for my step to

fall into time with your answering it,

for the sun’s blood to soak the dust of our going to

the end of our days, its road unending.

Heartbeat, I’ll tell you of the things you alone have the

feel for. Of the hills we went around, to

lay low from heaven knows. I’ll show you the knife they

parted a child from her shadow, paring

family trees away to make flutes for their own funeral marches.

Heartbeat, I’ll break the truth to you about

the music you alone can shape, when you take the pains to hear

of the forms our souls take as your lyrics.

Plotted Out

The way’s been plotted. The path between has been cut off,

the ground before us falls before our feet.

On one side, quicksand. On the other, a precipice. There’s no

backing away nor backing down who’s there.

There’s no earth left to retreat to. Not your summer house, not

the mausoleum you’re buried under.

A gun’s barrel sticks you in the back. A missile homes in.

The sky blackens, when you look for a sign.

It’s high noon, but our shadows are thrown from our feet,

our fright’s engrained in the brick and mortar—

and they’re not done with us, yet. We’re reduced to soot in our footsteps,

the survivors turn ashen, facing the truth.

The lucky ones understand, as Lot’s wife did, when the time comes

to turn, to remain firm in the face of

the worst going on all around you, to mark the passage by

laying your life at the end of their line.

There’s no one left to turn to. The signs of the times, gleaming

in and out of the cloud over your head,

cast suspicion back into the abyss etching its way in,

anywhere you go, confusion holds out.

I’m told to hang in there. Help is on the way. I’m not so sure.

If there’s redemption in being born again,

as much as there might be in bearing witness to the way

we’ve been, the way we’re divided on it.

I saw the roads go nowhere, going up in flames. I took

the same steps as everybody else to

go beyond those bombs, but, I fell just as short as they did,

the truth incinerated in my tracks.

Garrett Bruner archives ancient Greek script related materials and serves as a site archivist for an ongoing excavation on the Bay of Naples, Italy. His interest in antiquity began through its poetry, but his reading encompasses as many eras and as many directions as possible. Some poets he reads the most of are Akhmatova, Ovid, Cavafy, Meng Hao-Jan, and Rachel Korn. He has been writing poetry daily since 2016 and his poetry is forthcoming in The North Dakota Quarterly. He lives in Austin, Texas.