#nick lantz

i want to fill my mouth with your name

Pablo Neruda, Katrien De Blauwer, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz, Ashley Walters, Erika Meitner, Katrien De Blauwer, Ocean Vuong, Anne Magill, Nick Lantz

Some days I leave the grocery story and walk

all the way to the door

of our old house without thinking. Even the strange

dog waiting at the window seems to recognize me

as I stop just short

of trying my key at the lock.

You were a thread of a cobweb I breathed in and couldn’t

swallow, couldn’t cough up. All our boxed-up letters

can’t fathom the indifference

of the garbage truck, hoisting

the cans like an aging bodybuilder.

Hell is a country where it rains year round

and you must spend all day writing postcards

to relatives you don’t love. Today, you write,

it rained.

And wasn’t it the rain that caught you

rushing between buildings, someone else’s jacket

on your back, face turned

away, as if to avoid a camera? I wasn’t

there to see it, but I imagine all the things

you never told me as a line of footprints

dried into the concrete.

My mistakes are throwing

bunches of roses at me, cheering

for an encore. So here is my aria: a dirt

road, seven beers, the headlights

off. Enough of this.

Some day, one of the dark shapes wandering

across the frozen lake will turn out

to be you. I can already hear you at the door

shaking the frost

off your boots.

dear [ ] redacted... by nick lantz

The sea is incommensurable.

Photography: Su Xinyu

* * * *

I hid your name in a poem. I hid your name in my mouth. I hid your name in plain sight. — Dear [ ], Nick Lantz