By Joshua Zeitler
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Mentions of death
from a line by Adam Clay
To begin with, death is useful, though not
necessary. The wind that whips a half-mast flag
carries elegy wherever it travels. Maybe I felt it
rustle my hair like a lover’s hand, though
it was indistinguishable from epic
breeze, all battle and death. The obvious
must have woken me to its presence—the vulture,
that winged elegy, circling the elegiac river.
Then, across the gravel elegy of road,
corn rows were rooted elegies, the spaces between
places where elegy could playfully hide. And further,
chicory cracking soil was parched elegy.
Out at sea, a sounding line was drowned
elegy. I’m not being dramatic; I’m measuring
the immeasurable. A word is elegy
to what it signifies, Hass said.
You say ‘I love you’
too much, my ex once told me, when you can’t
find anything else to say. Perhaps it’s true
my very voice was elegy, its pitch vaulted
as a basilica. Fresco, too, is of course elegy;
the erosion of color with time, then, elegy
to elegy. Sometimes I wear gym shorts he left behind
as elegy, after warming them in the dryer.
The expiration date of a condom is elegy.
I should feel that welcome elegy, relief. Soon,
I’ll tell him about the tender pain
of budding breasts.
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Midway Journal, Pithead Chapel, The Westchester Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere.
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