The Glacier
Issue Two
Winter 2023

Love Letters

In some less than willful way the boy snaps to.
This is the time of the sea: he must pretend to be
doing much much better than he is doing.  His aunt
is about to marry a man who has the name of a dog.
This is not funny to anyone and the sea is a place
to drown.

Endlessly, I see the boy collapsing into war with
himself, but because he is young he is strong, and
a secret place inside begins to burn like some birthday
candle.  Someone he knew swims awkwardly and nervously
out to a raft in the middle of a large pond, and this
someone is very out of breath.

The daughter-in-law of a famous judge dies a very early
death.  A student our boy-as-a-secret-man taught befriends
the woman months before her death, but the dye is cast.
Another woman in another city about the same time has
the green eyes a deer would have and borrows a copy
of Auden’s  from a novice at the job

but a co-worker nonetheless.  Rumors have green eyes taking
much too much speed—wonderful copywriter. Much too much
speed. She puts her face just an inch or two from his.
He wants to kiss her eyes, but tells her to keep the book,
it’s a gift, he didn’t need it anyway (“I am through with it.”).
The sun knows you are through with it also.

Her green eyes know.  A student knows.  Our boy-secret
and his aunt and even namesake dog know.  One fact loops
into another like the ripples in the silly but dangerous pond.
Something planetary is sinking in the sky at 4 a.m.  He is
letting the cat out.  He is thinking the shredded turkey in
the canned cat food is a terrible sounding fact, and it, like
the others, might be horsemeat, and there will be no more of that!

What Kind of Problem

What kind of problem looks at a sailor

who is looking at the star
which is shining down on as many strangers

as there are other stars—
Joan of Arc
saw a delayed white coat
when she asked for water—

and many of these strangers

are whispering somewhere in their pasts
or in their futures—

Joan of Arc is
a kind of sailor herself
a kind of stranger too

a star
an emptiness

whispering one wave
then another

Voices they sing love me

please do

at this very small moment

sometimes I think my breath may have come
from a spider who was climbing my favorite tree—
how he remained unseen by me—maybe even was
hurt by me—it occurs to me at this very small moments
I never thought the moon could be hurt even though
the moon had all those marks on its white or yellow
or orange surface—you could see them some nights—
or visions of them—

but my spider wasn’t ever “my”—of course neither
was the moon, nor the yard, not the fence which was
small and partly broken but still somehow seemed like
a fine fence between this world and the rumored to be crazy
next—voices from an old house which leaned slightly
like a poorly (I supposed) made birthday cake—I forgot
the cake—it was green—I never forgot the house—it was
almost yellow—

it was almost then—
except now—when I hear your beautiful name from
somewhere in the world by accident—or I see the arithmetic
of some playful star in the branch of a tree trying to make spring
spring—or when I hear you breathe close to me—

now—now I say maybe the spider was not hurt like me
or by me—but took something from himself in that tree
to give secretly to the one me who was beside him sometimes—
very close in some unpronounceable avenue of the sky

Higby French

I live on Higby Road
and I don’t know if the glasses
you have are my son’s but his
are wire rims and he lost them
he’s only had them two weeks
he was with them when he lost
them near where you said French
Road during the day and if
you found them during the day
or evening they might be his
I’m sure if anyone from Higby Road
lost them later they may
not be his especially if
the glasses stayed in the grass
till nightfall beyond the evening
when the stars were if it was
the Wednesday you advertised
calm above them there in the night
grass and I’m calling to tell you
I’m just not sure if you could
describe them as calm glasses
with wire rims he might better
remember them but having them
so shortly maybe I should wait
and call back in a few days
to see if they are still my son’s

so soon

don’t kiss me
so soon when
one of your ears
could drop into
mine we are that
close—lamp lit
near your lips
makes me feel lit—
suppress my more
erotic desire until
early light I tell
myself—then tell
you too—we have
all the time in
the world

the light

so what if our mutual
ghosts stay behind not
unlike our mutual dogs,
Charlie and Sam, picking
up a scent, smelling
away like we might read
a headline or gravity, or
a memoir written by
yes, our mutual ghosts,
anonymous for now
for that’s their choosing
and in no way
shall we impose a name
or anything else upon them.

MICHAEL BURKARD‘s books include Unsleeping (Sarabande, 2001) and Lucky Coat Anywhere (Nightboat, 2011). Book so fhis drawings are available through blurb books. They are called “one day my face” and “a flower with milk in a shadow beside it”.

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