Poetry by Brian McCabe

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Part of each thing moves toward away
what remains is the outline of its movement
You sit by the window, name it arrangement

Then you walk out into coppering light
into the neighborhood whose houses  
look out at other houses, making them

them and you you so clearly they 
seem not to. Even now that you have 
nothing to do but brim with memory 

blue hems into mauve and rust 
shadows untuck from trees
in asphaltic arrangements of grey and green 

Mom texted there’s an offer on the house 
I stood near the canary grass when dad said
they found a mass-like shadow

Stirring in a shore breeze, its clarities cross 
one over the other like strands of dust
gradually weakening through pain’s mesh

These gardens, traceable to sways of blooms, 
now grow thin— name them arrangement. 
These days fit inside loss like a body in its shadow.

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Brian McCabe lives in New York City, where he teaches English. He received a BA from The New School and an MA from Hunter College. His poems can be found in Counterclock, Broadkill Review, The Sunlight Press, among others.

Photo by Matt Brown on Unsplash