Did . . . did a malachite write this

Malachite, being concentric hues of green, absorbs Earth’s energies w/o tearing spacetime.

So smooth you can carry it in yr pocket & no snag! Malachite’s rarely discovered in crystalline

structure, b/c its name means soft (half-copper, half-air.) Malachite builds up a charge, +/-.

B/c malachite’s weak, it can never leave you, no matter how you treated it. It is the word

feminine, oxidized—it puts more ins in her. Keeps yr home hearth-like. Like the pet

it waits,,,Malachite is also the travelling stone. Carry this lustrous, emerald-like mineral

w/you on plane in attractive velvet drawstring pouch. An economical sawn-through

cauldron at yr touch. Eye will swim through underwater lava tubes, reach a grotto stopped

w/foliage. See felled trees w/rings in eccentric orbits. Grocott-Gömöri’s methenamine silver

stain under microscope, predicting histologically clear skies. Foxfire vibing on rock. Osteons

torqueing in limbs. Clouds inside of clouds inside of clouds. Hmm. Hymn. Him. Can love

remember the question & the answer? Malachite lives to cry, Look! We hv come through!

But is not alive. A dream of diaphaneity by the calcified. Life requires 3 people to make a

tragedy. & for the tragedy to be performed. A 3rd person can’t come between a couple unless

you let him, & he wants to.

Untitled

Leaving the astronomical observatory. Saturn in June. A pearl menaced by shadows.

Its moons appearing to hole-punch the rings. Lost in the parking lot

the ink the night spills out is too much, again. A note in the window of a Mercedes:

Do not smash glass. I left nothing inside on purpose. Life extracts meaning from accident.

What I want. Where could it all go instead. Telescopes are too attached, tracking

right ascension, declination—the past in crosshairs. To be written on every moment is

sorrow. An imperative. Keep forgetting. Burn my diary. Leave me finally. Visit or don’t.

This halo-less universe. Gas & dust. Violence w/o blame. Cue the mystery.

My darling, the time—it needed to be spent. We went, we saw, & it said, there is no us.

Stevie Howell is an Irish-Canadian writer & editor. Their work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Gigantic Sequins, BOAAT, Prelude, and The Cossack Review. Their second book of poetry, I left nothing inside on purpose, publishes this month with McClelland & Stewart. Howell is the poetry editor at THIS Magazine and an MFA candidate at NYU.

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