Dan Rosenberg is the author of The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press, 2012) and cadabra (Carnegie Mellon UP, 2015). He has also written two chapbooks, A Thread of Hands (Tilt Press, 2010) and Thigh's Hollow (Omnidawn, forthcoming 2015), and he co-translated Miklavz Komelj's Hippodrome (Zephyr Press, forthcoming 2015). Rosenberg teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College and co-edits Transom.---------
when the small house empties I refill
into the freeze its oppression white
as heaven’s slow crystal meander
over my neighborhood blotted sky
I cast myself begloved behatted
against but one slight part of the cold
I raise the ladder in one hand in
the other a bucket primed with seed
I step and grip the rungs unfurling
above me aluminum wobble
I climb to the birdfeeder we’ve perched
atop a tall black pole its baffle
like a bell guard squirrels ricochet around
and up the blade of my confusion
getting in the way this menial
feeding of the creatures defines us
a unit of feeding whatever
mouths appear attached to wings or paws
or eyes like mirrors of my wife’s I
spill again my bucket into this
false small home we’ve made for no living
but eating what the birds want below
is what they don’t A wide splay of seeds
scavenged by squirrels mouths red in the snow
her teeth glow give her red tongue blackness
and the club beat has a dark corner
around it the bright dancer flexes
the pole is risen here green bills fan
what fire is left in a splay unzipped
from memory we’ve all come here to
be bodies caught in the gyroscope
when the dancer curls on her axis
points the long way is black-lit and black
napkin stuck damp to my glass breaks me
down with this visible love I am
of the strobe light still motion without
connective tissue anchors me here
in the fog dream of loose drifting men
a hazard of which anonymous
I am a lost part from my own true
lord I tell the dancer and she shines
a dry sweat prickles my pale trousers
the music hard aflutter she cups
my vision in her phalanges I
trace the soft ends of wings her shoulders
cut the air across my face hair whips
like feathers beating heaven this says
she through white teeth is a flagellum
one hungry lover turns to other
it’s thick outside today the sky melts
me down the fire escape is hot
black metal against my hand it sticks
to damaging my skin I am bent
like a supplicant to red weather
returning faithful to the rooftop
sunbathing lover burning bright red
wanting this lotion in my white hand
I squeeze it welcome onto her back
and gently rub at first protection
into her skin a black ant slowly
drowning then gets smeared across her thin
shoulder blades are soaking in the white
lotion infused with aloe cooling
and the black streak of ant planted there
like some divine leggy spray of seeds
disappearing into her hot skin
my lover twisting under my hands
I can feel the muscles bulging there’s
some tense shudder lover moaning from
under the vanishing lotion black
streaked two balls of down break to small wings
flexing lover turns to taste my face