Pastoral & Palinode by Tyler Mills

Pastoral

What to say of this era, which carries a blade in the pouch

of its cheek? RIP last year’s cactus. I still douse it in blue pixels

of Miracle Gro and run my thumb like a lover 

under the flat folds of its areoles—lamb’s ears

burned in the sun, rough as tongues.

I can turn any small thing into a wish for a was, 

or a never was. I lure hummingbirds to my patio 

with chrome yellow clusters of lantana that refuse to die. 

Water splashes the dirt, and a sunflower seed appears. 

How the eye with black bands and white edges

that look painted on might split under my care,

and if it does, invite me to look back at the choice 

that led to its growth. I’ll pretend the forest nearby 

isn’t smoldering, that each decision I make could be 

a point that leads me like knots on a gym rope 

back to a corrugated metal wall around a detention center 

or a tower sucking people inside & churning them into capital.

Purple trumpets. Lavender stiff in the heat. If I even could 

toss a why into the air, like a fly ball over a fence,

where would I put my question? As though to tempt me

to touch its hologram wings, a hummingbird

hovers two breaths from my fingers. A leaving.

Palinode

The tidewater tosses up handkerchiefs

of light that spread in splotches gone

quick from the green. My mother compares this 

to a voice returning. You stand here,

she says, pointing, and it will come. The warm and cool

grays like a meteorite. I wonder if

we can all be a little evil. Why don’t you talk to someone 

who can talk back? I ask. Her anklebones 

given little socks by the waves. Now, 

now. I think of two friends starting to meet each other 

across the street, from a distance: who smiles first? 

Horses as well as soldiers 

will sleep together on the beach 

by the thousand, unmentioned in old poems. 

The land rounds in. Smaller almost. 

White pebbles, sharp and near

began disappearing into the glass.

Row by row. Sealed. I say, This is not a metaphor.

Tyler Mills is the author of Hawk Parable (U Akron 2019), Tongue Lyre (SIU 2013), the chapbook The City Scattered (Tupelo 2022), and co-author with Kendra DeColo of Low Budget Movie  (Diode 2021). She teaches for Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute, edits The Account, and lives in Brooklyn.