Poem During the Plague: Poem 26

Eliot Cardinaux 

I WALK EACH DAY

Along these walls

I set up defeated country.

Even briefly

insane, I’m loved

by these walls, their

shadows faint

& harmless.

I walk each day.

The acorns push disaster,

furnish our living space.

These walls can move.

Someone’s pain

is confined by this.

The sky is a final,

fevered blue, where

chaos laid a hand on them.

****Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984, Eliot Cardinaux is a pianist and poet now living in Northampton, Massachusetts. Having studied jazz piano at The Manhattan School of Music, as well as contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory, he has lived in many places and absorbed a variety of influences. He is the founder of The Bodily Press through which he has released the works of other poets, as well as several of his own projects, including, most recently, the full-length poetry collection “Around the Faded Sun,” and the album of poetry and free-improvisations, “Magpie: Six Feet on Solid Ground,” featuring Asger Thomsen and Jeppe Høi Justesen. His first album as a leader, American Thicket, was released in 2016 on Loyal Label (Brooklyn, NY), and features Mat Maneri (viola), Thomas Morgan (bass), and Flin van Hemmen (drums). He has since been involved in projects such as a trio with bassist Will McEvoy and Max Goldman, Our Hearts as Thieves (with Asger Thomsen, Jonas Engel, and Etienne Nillesen), and his own solo project, Sweet Beyond Witness. His poetry has been published in Caliban Online, Big Big Wednesday, Hollow, Bloodroot Literary Journal, White Heat, Trestle Ties, and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. Cardinaux performs and records regularly around the East Coast and in Europe, with musicians such as Jeb Bishop, Randy Peterson, Taus Bregnhøj-Olesen, Eivind Opsvik, and Kresten Osgood. He is a current candidate for an MFA in Poetry at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.