WEAK MAGIC
I thought of a place—
Not too big. Backyard, pool, trampoline,
all made of brick.
I thought of a crashed car—
My father inside
his white coat
cloth sounds on the highway.
I thought of the wind’s destination—
It can’t settle just anywhere
and home is where it next rains.
I thought of my brother’s eyes—
Green and gold blurred
into my grandmother’s name.
I thought of nature—
Confused it
with something fair,
watched a man take his citation and walk.
I thought of December—
Gutted for parts and left
among buffalo grass
imitating highway breath
dissolving into fiction.
I thought up a therapist—
What do you remember
the squirrels
chittering oaks
out of acorns, tails
softer than lamb’s ear
in a garden beside rosemary.
And he seemed
like he was there.
The place where he resides
is scattered by love-balled hands
emerging from a Ziploc bag
holding fragments, the yucca’s bald head
for a little spiked halo flourishing
in season. There’s no easy way to go
about vanishing the beloved—like fog,
or a ghost freed from its nothing-pot
and cast in coral, it circles. A burst from
life looking back, it looks as though
he took his smokes with him.
Nick Visconti has been published by the Cordite Review, Prelude, Invisible City, and Image. Visconti was a semi-finalist for 2018’s Discovery prize and currently studying creative writing at Columbia University.