Death of a Ventriloquist

Learning to Wait

16 Learning to Wait I want to write an elegy to the edge of shade in Spanish I almost understand, strange trills and clucks of tongue; a sestina for the repeating ellipses of branches blown into dance; a mambo ballad that’s been tuning its chords in twitches of fingers that don’t pluck a note but know their tone and bend, like murmuring banks where smiles from far-off tables rise to meet needles and fall into the wind of a creek. I want a sonnet for the place between your thighs, the jeweled quiet there, the margins of that space, like warmth of a dream you’re just conscious of but haven’t left yet; I want to hold the line, to say: Here. Stop. And point to bark of eucalyptus, late fall, returning to leaves, cracking to speak a last flame of day in a curling, slow sun, so dry it can only mouth its ending. ...