He heard in curtains of sleet cleaving
from magnolia leaves encrypted Aztec
frequencies, he said. When the sun
god liquors loose each ashen tongue
the planet tattles. We are advised
to listen: this he'd grunt to signal his

dwindling fuse and the bartender would
show him the door. In his honor I tune
my form to the emanations of this vibrant
life: Either someone's dropped a blue
coin and I've picked up the murmur of its
ribs—a quarter kiltering beneath the blond

brick arcade of the whispering gallery
at Grand Central—or someone's table
is ready. No matter that I set my phone
to airplane while I thumb these lines, I can
still be reached by tender thought: a dirgeful
brass cortège stirs the ear inside my chest.

The man has passed. I got the text today,
and now feel at least obliged to observe
silence. Observe this café thick with humid
bodies, mugs wafting florets of breath, steam
revealing patterns in the glassy chatter.
For that he is a phantasm rumoring now

a timeless doom, quiet as the carousel
of a partial print. For that he is finally
transcendent. For that we convened for
drinks by some clockwork of urban chance
each week, my year adrift in the East Village.
For that I renounced him, and now regret

having done so. For that I vibed with his
passions—more, the deeper we reached in
our cups, rifling our mind's files for magical
thinking and secrets in our blood's chemical
record. I've traveled years through boot-black
redactions of thought to find his apparition

greet me with a raised fist in the dream of a
leather trench coat that crunches like gravetop
snow, dream of the self-schooled on secondary
sources. He hung a cardboard pyramid to cover
the bed in which he slept and quested visions
toward the headwaters of paranoia: nightsweats

of tar, drumbeats marooned in the distant hills,
Legba tapping his cane on the edge of sanity.
If you see something. What a fear of hobgoblins
and philistines can blind our better senses.
At the table beside me children play mosquito
tones they say are there, but I am unable to hear.

A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.

Maple leaves turn black in the courtyard.
Light drives lower and one bluejay crams
our cold memories out past the sun,

each time your traces come past the shadows
and visit under my looking-glass fingers
that lift and block out the sun.

Come—I’ll trace you one final autumn,
and you can trace your last homecoming
into the snow or the sun.

Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.
The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us
praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of  black

boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry
bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trick
or treat, smell my feet, give me something good

to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.
Let us praise the souls of   brown girls who sew
our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into

smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me
something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas.
Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children

who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens
their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.
“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,” shout boys

camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls
of  veterans who salute with their guns because
only triggers will pull God into their ruined

temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kids
masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,
let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes

are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned
rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trick
or treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us

praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,
Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead
fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers

of  asthma, mothers of  cancer clusters, mothers of
miscarriage — pray for us — because our costumes
won’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our

mothers of  lost habitats, mothers of  fallout, mothers
of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrow
will be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave —