Andrew Judson Stoughton
Soft Mirror Fluid
Mirror, churning in the night,
is a machine for distance.
Mirror deeper than the world
birds go to in skyscraper suicide.
Front-facing camera in which
the soul is stolen for its own safety.
Phone screen like an ocean
where I wait for you.
I stand on a deck in my best dress.
I am Penelope. I am Erín Moure.
I am a cantiga you will sing yourself in the bathroom.
Persona
Dearest doggo
whose name ages with us
who is like a website in the sky
who loved you
Hunched like a peanut
I’ve been thinking
Of the tenderness I held for his image
when you wouldn’t speak to me
for the earth and its servers
His sepulcher
He now never stops happening
There is nothing new on his page
But the images arise anyway, and your name
XIII
Your father was the dust spoken
of, the dead emerging from the tires
in an image of the world the soul demanded.
Your father, meanwhile, was an asshole.
I hated his house in Connecticut.
It was beautiful.
Your father tried to smoke a cig with me
in an Irvine mall, which is illegal.
He wanted to prove it to me.
Your father is a fiction for the sake
of my father. Your father was one of
God’s favorites, like the other billions.
Your father is fucking enormous.
My kid was going to play basketball.
Our kid was going to make us rich.
Your dad convinced everyone anaphora
was a feature particularly common in hispanic
poetry, but porteños found my use of it confusing.
Your father would have loved Atahualpa Yupanqui.
Feel free to text me if you disagree.
Feel free to respond my texts.
Your father who art in heaven
Would have been my father too.
Why didn’t you want that?
Your father would probably be
confused by that too. You should
text me to say what he has to say about it.
Your father would have never liked my father.
Your mother was nothing like my mother.
An image of the world the soul demanded.