We Were Gods & I Was Calm And Carried Nothing
By Ken Massicotte
We Were Gods
Beyond the courtyard her voice
wine drunk through the eyes is poured down
by the moon at night in torrents…. *
A young man, maybe fifteen,
blond Nordic hurried past
on the path to the house,
the thick shrubs knotted,
berries and thorns,
when I got there he was leaving,
dressed in a newly pressed suit
his music lesson done.
I rode through the storm
on a bicycle, the snow
impossible but I gripped
the bars with a young man’s strength.
Her song
was not language as we know it
each note pure with longing
and bright like a satellite flare
then clawing like the dark
center of a beehive.
If they saw they would know
we were gods –
we were not meant to be.
*Moondrunk, Pierrot Lunaire
I Was Calm And Carried Nothing
A tall man came to the door in a black suit. It was after the virus but before trench warfare. He couldn’t speak but could see through to the recently dead. He could find your sister or son but
was aging preternaturally.
So many were dead, including my wife and daughters. Even the horses, so I was walking. Each
town the same – diseased, deserted. My beard matted, my breath foul. I was sinew and bone in
wind-raw skin.
The road came to a vast steppe, cold with no sun. Scrub and rock, I was sick but continued south.
Ate bitter berries, grubs and wolf kill. Dug clams by a swollen river I couldn’t cross. Cried,
talked to myself, sucked grass and bark. Then, in a copse, an angel came and held me in her lap.
In my final sleep a group of nuns, like fashion models in high peaked habits, swirled in a flock. In
the bell tower I cut a priest to climb some spiral stairs, but they were too narrow. My mother was
there and said I had to push.
It was summer, the people tanned and happy. I couldn’t see the other side. There were two
gondoliers and I chose the one with the white stole. She said she would take me to a mile or two
of where I had to go.
I was calm and carried nothing. The air was warm and fragrant when we stopped. The water
black like ink in my cupped hands and sweet to drink. A charm of hummingbirds flashing ruby
and gold where the rivers pooled.
Ken Massicotte lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He has published in several journals, including: Wilderness House Literary Review, Gray Sparrow, Poetry Quarterly, Ginosko, Crack the Spine, Matador, Sleet and Grain.