Illustration by Kaavya Gnanam
i shall be a silent hallucination.
- mikhail bulgakov, the master and margarita
seven of spades:
some muse opens like a moth’s wing
& glancing through the windows of its unsuspecting neighbours
freezes in recollection:
tuesday after july fourth
it’s blue night season:
the whole world comes unspooled each time I mention
cherry coke & birthdays & tequila
& why I cried on chewed-up pavement with an audience of lovers.
& why new york (new york!) is echoing with visions
while I’m torpedoing a phone call in vienna,
discovering nostalgia wine by fountains in the shade
another heated day on parkways in hallucination of the adriatic
that laps shores with hungry tongues, all wet and ready for a bout of plastic sick.
vienna where the churches baptize me with hecatombs & rosaries & incense
& you hold me through the Albertine Monets
the first day, the day after it & every night.
oh! the glory of your hands
passing through riverbanks
chasing off the stink of time and bobcats and ejaculation
while I write thin odes for the leaking freezers
firing drops like snow in august.
like words shot out in golden houses, seven at a time
like guilt huddled in my chest for each cruel moment
launched your way in rome when sun slick love
bled in the attic, still perpetually in awe.
eris sker (she/they) is a senior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society. they like moon jellies and peonies.