c h a r l e s    g a b e l

from Orphic Variations

the sky molds

simple tomblight

the sky molds

our God is
now a forgetting

can evening be the fist
to hold memory?

ghosts plume out
our mouths

and suspend this dusk

plumes plume
from the pyre

in memory
we are dead, love


                (after Paul Celan)

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simple tomblight

burns me as I see

into the mouth
of our song

it peels out

your lungs
I want to hold it

and author the dream

in it I can still hold
you, Arcadian love

I can

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CHARLES GABEL is the author of the chapbook Pastoral, out from Strange Machine Books. He studied Classics at Loyola University Chicago and Poetry at Boise State University, and he lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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