Countdown Poem

Countdown as Slow Kisses   Michael Wasson

10. Here on my knees I look for the single animal: you left                                                           ravaged at the edge of a meadow 9. Is everything accounted for? The fingers dipped                                               beneath the torso—to keep this body bright 8. Every breath we are desperate to take                                sounds as if a war lost against a country of promise 7. Discarded halos: the light you remember                    in your head—you feed on what is crushed between the teeth 6. America declares these dreams I have every night be re-                                                                   dreamed & pressed into names 5. Upended petals of qém’es                                        abandoned like torn butterfly wings—we’é I pray 4. I pray that nobody                       ever hears us 3. An eye gone             bloodshot: I tear through the crisp apple of your throat & find— 2. myself: this—a boy beside a boy. An eyelash                             fallen at the base of a valley, our dark bones bursting in- 1. to bloom. I stare into your beloved face & enter: yes,                     yes, this nation, under god, its black sky we lay our                 nightmares to 0. where I am your animal: my Lamb—now eat                me alive.            Copyright © 2019 by Michael Wasson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 1, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About this Poem   "We are given these bodies—full of beauty, ache, and history—and are told to survive. We lean into joy and marvel, into our living, and yet we know that what we desire ultimately devours us. Might we surrender as we climax toward our gorgeous, unbearable ruin? This poem says yes." —Michael Wasson