Roswell Observatory

After searching
out some castle off the Carolina

           coast,

and finding it, 

and finding that the world, after

           all, isn’t as small as a turquoise

                       army winking

at Lon Chaney as the wolf
bane blooms

for the very last time, in
love, or at

the very least, on fire.

After all this,
we come home to

Alcatraz

to find the old house up for sale,

                       and the right-hand-man

           to the stars already forgetting

our secret names. Hiroshima, we come home

to Alcatraz, and Emily sleeps, David
too exhausted to save her

tonight, and the world asleep, and the world the same, when

something stirs in the dark.

 

 

 

Michael Keenan received his MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. His first chapbook, “Two Girls,” was published by Say No Press in 2009, and his first book, "Translations On Waking In An Italian Cemetery," will be released by A-Minor Press in 2014. His writing has appeared in Fence, Alice Blue Review, Shampoo, Paul Revere’s Horse, and Arsenic Lobster, among others, and is forthcoming in Poetry International.