After Antonioni’s La Notte

The champagne comes
and white stairways fly, jet-black
strawberries and white
stairways fly from
hospital silver. Release the trays
of gold

*

Truffles to the animals—they
claw our suits, mal-
aise ma-
laise m-
a-l-a-i-s-e

*

Into whose marble arms are we
released and what grey veins?
Each rocket is a cairn
of fibrous smoke.
Find your way home.
Find your way back
to me,

*

I know
you’ll settle here.
Here, worm touches sky.
Here, glass façades are robust,
fibrous water

*

Stop beside the tracks
for coffee-colored rust—the rust
is everywhere beneath the light.
The boys with the rockets.
They’re gone now.
They’re gone now.
They
are
gone
now

*

How pretty the pool is
with its blue garlands
on white garlands
with its frayed crowns
with its beetles and leaves

*

How pretty the pool is
with its teething garlands of blue
and its trim-torsoed, long-limbed light

*

When the statues wake,
I cut their cheeks, Ozymandias

*

When the statues wake,
the light and skin align;
briskly the flesh chatters

*

Valentina, seven-pointed star,
is that black blood pooling
in your mouth? Have the lines
around the buzzards’ eyes
turned silver? What shall
we play for? When you

*

Were sick, I
came to you; I tended you; I
loved you; I loved you
despite yourself; I helped you
remember your name

*

These mansions push
a horn in my chest. Let
me savor that debt let me
savor that debt let me savor
that debt

*

Say the strands are bright.
Under long lamps, all-flesh in bright strands.
On slick roads, strands from the lamps,
wet hair and shining laughter.
Take me to hereafters
of chains and milk, refusals.
It’s like the sadness of a dog

*

Will the syrinx split the head in two?
The lie’s trunk rears between its
two giant ears. We are reduced
and from nothing or not nothing
or from one another and without
restraint or brought to nothing
or very nearly ruin and disaster
disaster dis-aster then not
then take things as they come

from Scarecrow [Wesleyan University Press, 2016]

Robert Fernandez is a poet, visual artist, and translator originally from South Florida, now based in Lincoln, Nebraska. His work has appeared in recent issues of Callaloo, b l u s h, like a field, Little Mirror, Poetry, Print Journal, and other publications. Explore more of his work at www.robert-fernandez.com.