Two Poems by Will Cordeiro 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

DEFINITIONS

I am the stars that gutter through an empty night.
I am the night itself, gluttonous, each street like a necklace spilling pearls.
I am the supersaturated air and rain with its prison bars and the insistent, pockmarked face of fog.    
I am the moon. I seduce the waves. I glow like a skull from the other world.
I am the infatuation that water has for lower ground. I flow. I fall. 
I dream in the quiet language of the stones.
I sympathize with thunder when the lightning’s gone.
I am the wind that rearranges every dune.
I am the old dry bones that void to dazzled sand.
I am the illusion that sponsors the image that I am.
I am the mesmerism between each bird that makes a vast migration. 
I am the path they take when no bird’s there.

The iron in my blood would make a compass pivot.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TAKEBACK

I penned a letter; licked
a stamp. Each short slow day—
an ashtray’s powder. Now
March and sent, the skyline 

sours. Crows flare off
into their shadows.
Soot-blackened snow-dumps
shine again, still lingering all

slush and azure. Aspen, tremor. 
I asked for you to send my packet.
Whole hillsides
like a coin flip stammer. 

A shard calves off an icebound block.
Four-handed score: snug as hush
and green as rain… Fade
out—a blood-like dark 

behind a secret panel.