Two Poems
by Will Cordeiro

Oblivion


Stardust prowls
your bloodstream, 

each vein beneath
your skin tinged   

glacial blue. A color 
only seen down ice-

fishing holes below
cotton-candy pink 

cloudbanks in winter.
You can walk a river 

& never know it here.
Every starlit splinter, 

every winking snow-
flake sinks & spangles.  

You watch your breath
disintegrate, unwritten.

Listen to a soft-lipped 
sybil nibble the frost- 

bitten edges 
of your life.


---


I Ain’t Gonna Worry No More


A get-along in the slap bass, a little pepper in its step,
we sip the night’s wine while the old bullfrogs dicker  
in the muck pond as if all the scrapyard’s rust heaps
were skiffle-boards. Bottleflies glitch the porch light.
Hard times we do without the butter, take whatever
the pawnshop haggles us for heirlooms. Podder on. 
Drop by drop, you fade. Lean back. Shuffle the cards. 


---

Will Cordeiro has work published or forthcoming in AGNI, Best New Poets, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.