In Which the Poet Arrives, Dwarfed in a City

I do not expect sleep to pursue me in revolt
of sincerity and the wooden palettes
I was forced to put up after the whole house
started imbuing outside with a sense of grief.
My doctor said the only unironic image he’s seen
in his days of practice is a man weeping outside

a supermarket for all he could never get
himself, or officially, “the heart’s broken feet.”
To prove they were only a matter of opinion
I threw the script off a bridge and laughed
at how immediate my heart’s embarrassment was
and how I couldn’t compress how cold I felt

into something even the size of an elephant,
which I could have at least ridden into town
and past the security (I didn’t expect the flecks
of mud to show through my shirt or that
the dripping sparrow would pick the locks

of dreams and roll them out with the tremble
of a plague or that the bedroom would glow
beautifully with the right lampshade flipping
light’s coin to the other side) — if I thought

any of this would happen, I would have scratched
down the walls and engaged everything
as a painting, solem, on my hands and knees,
praying it could exist.

-C.S. Henderson