The Water Tower Takes on Sonnet Form

I doubt it’s so much that I’m happy, but perhaps,
Without putting too fine a point on it, I am suspended
In the suffusion of “happy.” Adorno says, “One does not
Have it, but is in it.” It’s the truth. In the reminders, I hasten.

   β

Truth is scarily arid. But anyone could have told you.
I think it is the fact that I understand more than just a little
Of God. The dappled things. Trout that swim. (It is helpful
To gesture to God, whatever God is or isn’t, from time to time.)

   γ

It could be that time of the day. In a wondrous way has there
Been through you the exception to my stagnant, corrupt way
Of conducting myself. An island mist brightened
By the morning moon. A clearing before the furtive thicket.

   δ

The dark soul of the world, Gass announces.
Five and five make ten. No Hell would be Hell,
Without some joys intermittent. Therefore,
All seasons shall be sweet to thee… in a way.

   ε

I shudder. With no wind to react in kind, how could I not?
I think about the right time. This conception of “the right time.”
How we willed our right time. When I consider how
That will came about, I become more than a little volatile.

   ζ

Tears, idle tears. Love and love. Love is not
Love. Love is Colder than Death. Like any other,
Félicité had had her love story. For good is the love
Ending fatefully. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.

    η

The public benches dry in summer gusts, here
Where I find myself. With the coming of evening, bulbs
In the apartment flicker, no discernible cause behind it.
Baubles squeal with glee; wine glasses gossip in the wash.

   θ
All I can be are my works and workdays. Nam Sibyllam
Quidem, so on.
                             Or am I wrong about that? Maybe I am
Beginning to dip, physically speaking.

  ι

At some juncture, it came to me—in Spanish,
One can’t write ‘desert’ without being or self, i.e. the word ser.
I suppose, also,—without a being or self to write it! Imagine
Orbs and chimes; imagine wainscots, whatever those should be.

   κ

Then there’s the trick and recourse of refresh.
When can I twirl for you? My sincere hope is that you will
Live long enough to see me ruffle more pleasurably.
Persuasion pours in arrays. Persuasion is magnification.

   λ

But anyone could have told you! But why do I persist
So heavily on my past? Don’t I usually, rather, have delusions
Of prophecy? I find in reality I am the clairvoyant in reverse:
Penetrating into a past; and only once it’s already significant.

   μ
The moon is some error. The moon that we see is the same
As the moon that is some error. It appears before any
Certainty can roost. Then, the image artifact flaps wings
And is off. I don’t mean to tell anyone what to believe.

   ν
“How different the sense when another speaks it!”
Not for nothing is there this question of the unshakable,
That which dogs us spasmodically. A futile, bleeding wisdom
That I, personally, never have known the fuck to do with.

   ξ

And sink into my arms, as though there were ice there, and the crackling.
I became who I am following events surrounding you, and what’s left,
But to throw out that schematic? Now is the time
For me to blur, in bliss, and rough house solo in shallow water.

David Alejandro Hernandez is an undocumented writer, originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, but mainly from Northern California. He holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and Washington University in Saint Louis. Awards and recognition include the Senior Fellowship in Poetry and the Howard Nemerov Prize from Washington University in Saint Louis; and the Joan Lee Yang Memorial Prize, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for a Collection of Poetry from the University of California, Berkeley. Work recently appears or is forthcoming in Oversound, NDR: New Delta Review, Burning House Press, TYPO, Apartment Poetry, Fence, and in collaboration with Saint Louis’ 100 Boots Poetry Series.