DAYBOOK

 

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In canyon shadow, 

each wishing-star rushed off before it reached

the wash. One leaf, up-standing, 

 

    shudders on the surface,

 

then pivots in the seethe and billow, 

taken slack 

across the gushing rocks.

Light gashes on the ear-sick suck of wrack.

 

Aspens, spillage. 

                  Each piece of raucous dreck  

—a fleck of straw,  

                         a fleeting stick—

slides slick along the twisting current’s rasp,

a torrent with shook particles of gold.

 

Quick tousled latticework of divots 

the excrement of trees goes valleying:

leaf fed by light, by light gets eaten. 

                                                          Such grist 

the current’s restless talons pick apart 

to joints and veins intrinsic of each relic.    

 

The crystal-craft of sun bends over scree.

Each fold and unresisting scrap aroused 

into its dark finale, 

 

each name 

                                        grained out

& ousted,                     aimless.                                    

 

                                                   Day tilts 

and cuts a slant across the scarp.       

Still, a five-mile hike back to the village.

 

Hawk turning in the up-

draft dips 

and smolders.

                                       Scintillas

now incinerate themselves

while all these outward things 

I have out-thought

and raptured into emptiness

are the remains beyond myself remaining.

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BIO:

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​Will Cordeiro has published work in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and The Threepenny Review. Will is the author of Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024) and is co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024) as well as the forthcoming New Foundations of Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2026). Currently, Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.

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