Aaron Magloire, Queens, New York City, USA
Half Past Loon
...the poor bird cannot be omnipresent;
if he dive here he must come up there.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods
By the inlet’s a loon hatchery
half the year, but not now. Now, I guess,
is not loon hatchery season. Not every day
is a good time for attending life, especially life so easy
to crack into a frying pan and serve with rye.
Time must be given for the loons
to recover from their loon fucking, pay
all their loon bills, get their loon houses
in order for their loon guests coming
for loon dinner. So much easier
to sing on the lake, from the fronds, sing
loondrunk and some measure of happy,
when there are no born or soon-born loons to worry
about waking. Other birds hatch
in August. File to their complaint departments
if you must, even now, watch something grow.
Travelogue: Rabat
For a month it did not rain.
Every night the adhan sounded
from somewhere I could not see.
I had one small window. I had long thought myself
a man in need of many windows
but was wrong. It looked out
onto a graveyard, beyond which
was the sea. I was more watched
than watcher. The tombstones under lamplight
glowed yellow, like jaundiced flaps of skin.
I loved them. I was not sad. Every morning
I stowed small green plums from breakfast
inside my fridge for the evening.
I licked powdered sugar from my fingers
and still remember the word for star—
najima—though most else escapes me, forgotten
lexicon of a time I did not know what to do
but thrust my body into the large, saltwatered
world. I’ve tried to write about it
before. Only now does it return, proper
and crystalline, taps me on my shoulder
as if to ask where I have gone.
I’m right here, I say. Stewed
carrots, twin scarabs in Ouarzazate.
No. You know what I mean.
I never did find it in me to throw a stone
at the wild dogs, no matter how ghoulish
they became after dark. I knew
what they meant. I was at the mercy
of so much except myself.
What was that word again?
For a month it did not rain.
Monument
In a few days, the wild pig dead
on the side of the road will begin to reek. But for now
it is a monument: we must remember,
passing its white belly raised
to the sun, its hoofed limbs stiffly
lathered with rigor mortis, its red honeysuckle
mouth agape in disbelief
that all this really does end, after all,
we must remember how quickly, how wholly,
how unceremoniously the earth may decide
it needs us no longer—or, perhaps,
that the soil needs us more.
There are no politics to this
save those that we invent;
no emotions save those we impart;
no reason save that which we attempt
to decipher. Instead, merely pray
someone would cover you, at least,
with a tarp to lessen the stench.
Then walk into the world
again, again, again.
Aaron Magloire is from Queens, NYC, and is a junior studying English and African-American Studies at Yale University. His work has appeared in Whale Road Review, Empty House Press, and elsewhere, and will appear in the 2021 edition of Best New Poets. If you really want to, you can find him on Instagram as @a.magloire.
