Will Cordeiro
Canticle
Spilled spiders riddle out of jellied eggs.
A badger puzzles and then swaggers off.
A hammock sways. Mucked litter shines.
Stones puddle into mirrors nearing noon.
Wind combs a cowlick in the grass;
a lawnchair’s raptured into chrome.
Each thing exact, itself alone—
yet metaphor is never lacking.
A meadow rollicks loads of pollen.
Waxwings flock like checkerboards.
A chance significance plays on all surface:
glance—each fact is scribbled into figures.
Woodlice feast on freckled chips.
Dandelions englobed with pappus;
seedheads bandied by a strobed-lit zig-
zag breeze dapple, lather pasturelands.
Desquamations of the summer’s
bounty. Scrollwork of the paper
birch. Rollcall of clouds, dark and tipping
over. Grackles cark, up-scraping any road
-smooshed carcass of a common toad. Rot’s
hexwork goaded into squat. A compact splat
of mushrooms rupture poofs of spoor
and sunlight fattens on each buttercup.
Will Cordeiro has published work in Agni, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Will’s collection Trap Street won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.
Return to November 2020 Edition
Spilled spiders riddle out of jellied eggs.
A badger puzzles and then swaggers off.
A hammock sways. Mucked litter shines.
Stones puddle into mirrors nearing noon.
Wind combs a cowlick in the grass;
a lawnchair’s raptured into chrome.
Each thing exact, itself alone—
yet metaphor is never lacking.
A meadow rollicks loads of pollen.
Waxwings flock like checkerboards.
A chance significance plays on all surface:
glance—each fact is scribbled into figures.
Woodlice feast on freckled chips.
Dandelions englobed with pappus;
seedheads bandied by a strobed-lit zig-
zag breeze dapple, lather pasturelands.
Desquamations of the summer’s
bounty. Scrollwork of the paper
birch. Rollcall of clouds, dark and tipping
over. Grackles cark, up-scraping any road
-smooshed carcass of a common toad. Rot’s
hexwork goaded into squat. A compact splat
of mushrooms rupture poofs of spoor
and sunlight fattens on each buttercup.
Will Cordeiro has published work in Agni, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Northwest, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Will’s collection Trap Street won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.
Return to November 2020 Edition