Dreaming of the Castrato


What’s missing--
not my rhubarb’s skeletal jade,
not that weird

corrosion in a blue bowl
where strawberries jimmy

their black edges
back into water. This summer I’m sick

of the squash blossoms’ slow machismo. So when
a Byzantine choir rises suddenly
from the garden

on the gust of voice, I turn and they drop
like yellow crabapples

to just one song:
a man-child’s
cool soprano. He’s long-limbed

and smooth by my cedar fence, the fence
hemmed in eyelets and a grackle’s
stray gaze.
He’s thin as if something

has sunken and left
only his larynx’s pure treble

Sing me something,

I say, that will make the whole
garden flare. When his lips open

I stare, trace the skin around his blond mouth’s
downy vibrations. It’s like that

moment my wet finger circles
the cut

crystal lip of a wine glass with a touch
that sets

all the ghosts singing.

- Anna Journey (from diode poetry journal)

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