LATE WORK
Luke Roberts

For Alice Notley

New voice floats up on rising sap,

leafy and ripe and not what I want.

I have to go in back of head, glaze

over to unlock the place I keep

the coda warm, thin cloud ceiling

caught in epic throat

    no more honey

at the linebreak, no more hidden

city music, song of long body

incidentals in the night world

specific details I withhold 

spilled honey too slow to be quick with

in Berlin talking quick like a bird

before my friends started dying

tree-branch bouncing over streetlight

lip-reading the crisis

terror as the ancient name for earth

I carried this joke for you

last spring in my mouth

I’ll take all of it

soft harsh & impossible

we can sit in silence too