Nova


                        Winter, and every tree
                                 has lost its head.

Grey-silver birds
bicker on a stricken twig—

               they fly up and cathedral vacant space,
                        all subterfuge

                                      and sunlight, alchemical
as distance: swerve and jig                                (amid the lace

                                                  of a white

new gown)
                                           before relighting on a swaying
               branch. The ice

                        sharpens into teeth; hangs
                                                                        thinner

from the eaves. The bare
                                 limbs dance. And evening

laces up. You waste away.
Each day,

               a breath-mark on a mirror.




Will Cordeiro received his MFA and Ph.D. from Cornell University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Crab Orchard Review, CutBank Online, Drunken Boat, Fourteen Hills, Phoebe, and elsewhere. He is grateful for residencies from ART 342, Blue Mountain Center, Ora Lerman Trust, Petrified Forest National Park, and Risley AIR at Cornell University. He lives in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he is a faculty member in the Honors Program at Northern Arizona University.