Envisage Persuade Murmur Bloom

Darkling I listen.
   It’s cold here
under two blankets
   with a calf cramp
and the lamp on
   and the evening on
      dismal wet immense
         I worry for the
   birdies in these gales
      but they’ve mysterious
ways. Darkling I
   possess a solitary mind
and wandering hands
   the kind of clumsy
integrity that says
   I cannot line up at the
      nursing tent until
         my lieutenant does
   and you are my lieutenant.
      Your legs were blown
admirably to bits
   now you take dictation
from the various breezes
   that’s your role in this
peacekeeping operation.
   And it is a bloody peace.
      It’s cold here
         between two dinner plates
   clattering. Between
      a woman in black fur
and her long European
   cigarette. The off-kilter
-ness of fruit stands coll-
   ecting the season’s last snow.
Darkling I hesitate.
   Darkling I employ
      a random verb generator
         I envisage I persuade
   I murmur and then I bloom.
      Coquettish spring storms
they enjoy being watched.
   Empathy I beseech thee.
Haven’t you ever wanted
   to be watched in the shower
or on the fifth floor of MoMA
   while you regard Landscape at Collioure.
      When the huge black bucket
         of night dumps over you
   it's your job to refill it from the spigot.
      Go out and get married
or sit by the window yowling
   as your neighbor tries to
parallel park. Find your
   own darkling and
say darkling I listen.
   They love that shit.

James Kelly Quigley is the winner of the Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in Poetry. He is also a Pushcart Prize and two-time Best New Poets nominee. His manuscript Aloneness was a finalist for the 2022 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, New York Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, SLICE, The American Journal of Poetry, and other places. He received both a BA and an MFA from New York University, where he taught undergraduate creative writing and was an editor of Washington Square Review. James was born and raised in New York. He works as a freelance writer in Brooklyn.