I.
Not dumbfounding bliss, nor pointless and cruel, we learn that death is creepy and familiar: Bureaucracy, small-scale flirting, yearning. Occasional cloisters of comrades, a gaudy festival, liquor with flecks of gold in the bottle. Memoranda, more yearning, and bones. But there, everything is
more stylish, with muted colors in the patchwork windows, cigarette cases and holders, and the
rounded architecture saying: Above all, we need to be smooth.

II.
We were the two people you knew who wouldn’t mind being dead, you said, and yet—: here we
were. I laughed, then you laughed; we found it funny, and it was funny. Most things are funny
when you wouldn’t mind being dead.

III.
Yo nunca pedí nada sino un pájaro hecho de huesos. Tienen la musica más hermosa aquí. Cuando duermo, sueño
que puedo tocar la nieve mientras cae en las flores, y cuando me despierto, todos los trenes se levantan para saludarme.

You said this to me in your sleep.
 

The Gilbert Lake's Spring Answers All Your Questions : B.J. Best

—so blue?
            an eye of ice. 

—the conifers?
prickly, nervous companions.

—the fallen, waterlogged trees?
a latticework of railroads, the churning freight of silt.

—silver water beetles scuttling over the muck?
no, platinum.

—great blue herons?
ask the wind.

—gilbert’s lake?
lily pads writing love letters to themselves.

—the chimes of mosquitoes?
steady clocks.

—a motorboat?
heavens, no.

—a motorboat?
propellers a cycle i understand, the returning of water, hulls the color of cisco that die off en masse once a generation, knots in their bow lines that only tie back to themselves.

—cattails?
stands of praying women.

—the fallen, waterlogged trees?
only they can anchor the rain.

BJ Best
BJ holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The Cream City Review, Permafrost, and Nimrod. His long poem Crap is available as a chapbook from Centennial Press.