Fondue

A curlew whooping & dipping between the 
dimensions you look up but you don’t see it the 
ghost swooping into the past & future the present’s
so rarely here in my hands the washed-out yellow & purple 

twilight that lasts forever in early July

                                                                a caquelon first rubbed

with a garlic clove then melting raclette I
want to ask everyone what they want in this poem I can’t 

it’s all up to me now the heat lightning the crusts of
bread the swallows zigzagging toward every cardinal 

point the poems
I wrote & may write & haven’t written & won’t the
words you speak when you’re standing outside yourself &
wonder why all the while
                            dipping between dimensions the pale 

purple twilight melts into the space-time continuum
just another Star Trek: the Next Generation episode the USS 

Enterprise suddenly shifting at light speeds into the wrong place at 

the right time or vice-versa—this happens all the time
the consistent heat that keeps the cheese from burning
it could be Gruyère stirred constantly the ghostly twilight yellow 

melting—tinges of purple—it could be raclette the white sky 

overhead awash with curlews you can’t see I want to ask everyone 

what comes next in this poem it’s up to me of course—the words 

you regret—the words we don’t say of course we mean them so 

urgently we say something else a joke perhaps dipping into
the past the future present’s so rarely here—the natural sustain 

of an archtop acoustic’s low E string humming for seconds & 

seconds until you damp it
                                                                by accident the curlew dipping 

between the Gruyère & raclette patches of sky its call
melting into the poems I won’t write
                                                                        in this pale purple twilight 

at some point I’ve held everything in my hands at some points
I’ve held nothing why can’t I ask everyone what they want in this 

poem a thin crust of toasted cheese—not burnt—what remains
the sky as purple as a bruise in the east—There was a
Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode like this

Jack Hayes
© 2010