Chiaroscuro
I fill the water with my inky emissions. Invisible
life. A heart full of shadows,
like Sunday mornings. Brick alley
chiaroscuros. I pretend they never find me
haunting myself in rain puddles. Never splash
myself with dirty water to taste
myself. I stopped pressing my tongue
to my wounds as a child. There’s only
so much blood can tell you about
the face the world paints
over the one you were born with. The broken nose.
The crooked eye. I once saw a shadow discover
itself beneath a bridge and disappear.
Hello! Hello! I have settled for making
a small noise with my breathing. Forgive
me if I disrupted your summer plans. I had a child once.
He caught a scent somewhere between here and nowhere,
and followed it without a word.
I want to believe there is an art to vanishing,
but I fear there is greater skill
in staying.
Zachary Kluckman is an award-winning poet based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. An alumnus of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, he was selected by Oliver de la Paz as the winner of the 2024 Two Sylvia’s Press Chapbook Prize. Kluckman has been recognized with a Thomas Lux Scholarship to the Palm Beach Poetry Festival and the Button Poetry Short Form Poetry Award. His work appears or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, and Wesleyan University Press’s Dear Yusef. He is the author of four poetry collections. (Photo courtesy of Paul McClure)
