Harmonic Convergence
- Jun 28, 2024
- 2 min read
by Daniel Brennan
Not as in the planets are aligned, but as in summer is picking our flesh from its teeth.
Do not underestimate a dog with a bone to pick: I take my time in these rivers of men.
On the corner of my block, the heat of lush dead things. So many beautiful, but also dead things.
I’ve grown impatient with the morning light. Selfish, the way it unravels across the country in equal weight;
doesn’t it know that I am a creature of relentless hunger? My country’s genetic predisposition.
Somewhere within our Americana flatlands, they are burning a thick incense of bodies,
the slick and roll of flesh mid-blaze. Nowadays we are told to call it compromising.
You tell me you not to call it a crisis if you never stop to smell the roses, or where the roses had once been.
It is only a crisis if you acknowledge there was a garden before and now there is only the echoed click of was.
These severed days, the days barnacle’d with rust. Our bodies stacked like the tenants of a morgue.
Not harmonic convergence but the gap in our teeth where uncertainty coagulates;
the hollowed jaws of populace asking when is too late to turn back?
The planets line-up behind one another, following the future like a Judas goat.
Your fingers inside me, your tongue inside me. What’s left inside me? With all that there is, no reason to believe
in a greater meaning. We are merely flies frantically gathered around this vast, unblinking eye.
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he is in love, but just as often he is not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sky Island Journal, and ONE ART. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @dannyjbrennan.
