Epithalamion

By Robert Fernandez b. 1980 Robert Fernandez

At once this dragnet of cousins

Whips its way into your presence saying

None of them among us. They are

Oracles on the court of midnight,

The tight filigree of a mind or your

Splashing around in, your pandemonium

Of copper graffiti inexpertly put up.

They make weapons of furled hands.

“We will walk, but our bones will carry

Ribbons of lead, or we will, like

Acrobats mill-headed in 3s (3 blades,

3 hips, 3 tongues), answer to what comes

Before, what comes before?” Eleousa,

Master of Dark Eyelids, eye opening

Like a fennel seed, you are generous

Or are you not, do you shore up and

Wink at the soul? What does the soul say

Other than “my divorce from . . .,” “tan

Holiday . . .,” “smoking crystal in teak rooms . . .”

But should have asked, “What do you

See?” The sun a sequence of fans, a bridge,

Only so exquisitely cabled as to make us

Still—shall we fall

Or travel between bridges

Among the robust, sane clouds,

A face cut from smoke, heat, and light?

The sun, dancing in a vial, the initial

Memory of what it was to be born—

Doberman of a sheer-white universe—

To school out—the audacity of rising

Without name or color to new rooms,

New youth, fruitful, born singularly

To precise moments not in epiphany

But duration—as under new weather

We become—in action, receive—our

Bodies uncasked like umbrellas under

The flamingo-red light of the racing day.

Source: We Are Pharoah (Canarium Books, 2011)

Biography

Poet and editor Robert Fernandez was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in Miami. He earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the author of the collections We Are Pharaoh (2011) and the forthcoming Pink Reef (2013). In poems that take on ancient Egypt, the legacy of surrealism, and the news cycle, Fernandez follows the path of heat and light through both body and empire. In an interview with the literary . . .

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