- Mar 21
- 2 min read
Elegy for Dean Young on Toy Theremin
Dean, are you there in the bright-shining thicket?
I’m here in the desert, holding your last book.
I’m staring at the mountain, at the armless saguaros
and the ones that look sick and pockmarked and one
all twisted like it did a tab of bad acid. I’m hoping
for rain. For you, making goofy faces in the clouds
I have to invent because someone’s swept the sky
like a hair stylist’s assistant somewhere women go
to disappoint themselves in the mirror. Dean, forgive me
this dumb elegy. I only saw you that one time onstage
and then once across the room at a bookfair but Dean, you
were my Beatrice! Now my banjo’s all unstrung.
The bats skim low over my friend’s swimming pool at night
and I think of you in Austin by the bridge and the river.
Dean, I was there where you were! Watching those near-
invisible shapes at twilight. That euphotic hour with just
enough light for predators. I think you were in Cincinnati
when one swooped down and took you. Now I’m looking
for the portal. For that loophole in the mortal contract.
A snorkel that doesn’t make my mask fog up
like a frosted martini glass. I’m getting drunk
on the pulsating radio waves you shed and also, yes,
on gin. I’m tenderly laying my dead cats down
next to your dead cats. Who doesn’t love a dead cat?
I miss the last one almost more than my last
dead brother. That’s how life goes on this planet--
stoned laughter beside a floating rubber alligator,
then weeping into a beach towel. The sky
tonight’s a black brain, a few sad radiant
thoughts streaking through. Dean, Dean! Yowl.
KIM ADDONIZIO has authored over a dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently the poetry collection Exit Opera (W.W. Norton). Her collection Tell Me was a National Book Award finalist. Her honors include NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Visit her online at https://www.kimaddonizio.com