“Dissociation” and “Central Park, Nocturne,” Two Poems by David McLoghlin

“Dissociation”

During sex the mind drifts free
a gull—a gulf—
off the body’s edge
back to the realm
of hurt, where the self
is an intense buzzing of bees
—insects, pins and needles:
helpers—maybe mice
frantically trying
to wake the young hero
from the sleep he was in,
has been in all these years
where something is happening where
someone is doing something to him.

*

“Central Park, Nocturne”

“The living iguanas will come to bite the men who do not dream.”
–Federico García Lorca.

Black trees—a little snow. People pause, deferring
to expensive dogs, maybe find a moment, like prayer,
breviary. From the reservoir, the buildings park-side seem
Angkor-Wat accretion, mud cities in Mali.
Gateway of oasis. City of the wolf and the iguana.
My childhood and future seem to have departed
to go jaunting, along empty pathways
under lamplight—electricity mimicking gas light—
in a park from home: the Retiro, maybe Phoenix Park.
Leaf preserved in grey ice. White ambergris.
Yellow hexagonals corona, come on high up,
hive-like, extending, silent. Night’s calm black,
under surfacing.

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Crash Center by David McLoghlin is available via Salmon Poetry.