the blue sweep of that lyric, calling everything back—
a crystalline pitch-shift, rich and rapid
as the snap of a nylon line, a kite flaring like a pilot light
in the cobalt gut of the sky, and you hanging onto it,
perfect. every meadow a mythic green, lit neon
by late-August condensate, and the Oakland blocks vacant
except for us, wandering in step, time reeling skyward
with untenable speed. when you held me,
I flattened into panic, knowing the moment
from before language, seeing, as if through roiled water,
how it had already come to an end. I proceeded anyway, staring
into the black glass of the canal, through which
I would have jumped, had you asked, like an idiot dog
through a paneless French door, or like the synthesizer now whining
into a new and desperate register, dredging up
that walk through your indifferent city, our goodbye
without touching, your return to the woman
who didn’t know my name. in my room,
I rinse the song until it drains of meaning. outside,
blurring the stoplights, a radio-static rain.
—
Clare Flanagan is a Brooklyn-based poet, music writer, and night owl. Raised in Minnesota, she recently relocated from San Francisco to New York City, where she is a Wiley Birkhofer fellow at NYU. Her poems and reviews are published or forthcoming in Poetry Online, the McNeese Review, and Treble Zine. In her free time, she enjoys reading, long-distance running, and listening to Charli XCX.