Instantaneous Letter Writer
After the others go to bed, my lamp
the only light for six miles,
___________________they return:
a crowd of moths
who wreathe my window’s panes
before making their way in,
batting their songs along the ceiling
and eventually on my book, my cup,
my arm. I could shove each husk
on a hook, cast them out—
a final descent
worthy of a Mardi Gras prince.
Or press them to the resin of my veins
so when they split the tree of my body
they’d be chiseled free;
reborn, framed in sterling.
___________________Instead
each keeps buzzing in his crumpled tissue,
Plácido Domingo
in the amphitheater of my wastebasket.
To weaken one’s grip as you crush a thing
is not the same as mercy.
***
Sandra Beasley is the author of a memoir and two poetry collections. “Instantaneous Letter Writer” is from her forthcoming third collection, Count the Waves (W.W. Norton, June 2015), which is also the May 2015 Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. An earlier version of the poem was featured in a broadside by the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she coordinates literary events for the Arts Club of Washington.
