My Palm as Prospector’s Map to the Abandoned Subway of Rochester
read: the shadows will be behind
you if you walk into the light
and I will pray for the sun to
grant me this: a marled sky,
a shiver of silt weeping silver
onto our outstretched hands
say: memory is an alluvial plain
and we are sifting nostalgia,
or say: memory is stale dust
and we are winnowing away
or whisper: we are the bawling
darkness beneath the city, wild
blooded nocturne caroming
through wrought iron & concrete
I will say: these words are the shiftless
wind or these words sluice through
flume & that is not enough to hold
the open mouthed roar of the
cascading Genesee that is my
panning heart spilling into
another body of water
say: I am not open but I am opening
and I am not love but I am loving
and I am not the river, I am the roar
David Joez Villaverde is a CantoMundo fellow and an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan. He is the winner of Black Warrior Review’s 2018 poetry contest. His work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, RHINO, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Detroit and can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com