Again, the dream: I need to leave,
yet each door I open opens
another room, another door.
The pen in open. Is this made
possible by someone whose traces
hover in the absence? The seen
in absence. I’m aching for you,
dear architect. The further back
through history we look, the more
faces fade—a room in a house
we cannot see, nor imagine ourselves
out of. December’s advancing dark.
The ember in December. I can’t
breathe in this room I guest,
you ghost. The inverted asthmatic
trees in my chest burn to bloom,
& must relearn each time to rise
from the ground, & to return.
The urn in return. & the rue.
–first appeared as a Broadside for Broadsided Press
Philip Metres is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), Pictures at an Exhibition (2016), Sand Opera (2015). His work has garnered the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lannan Fellowship, two NEAs, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, the Hunt Prize, the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Watson Fellowship, the Lyric Poetry Prize, Creative Workforce Fellowship, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.
