Der Tod [Death]
by Dan Kraines
—after Rainer Maria Rilke
like raspberry cream within my stein,
pink as hurt skin.
At the rivulet, along the lip,
trickling beads where you clicked your spoon.
What pressed your need, unfisted
and burnt away?
You said how you felt only
through familiar signs, like a novella’s
trope. Then withdrew
without the gift of my mouth.
My stomach tingles, as if welling up
with hunger: you came for me and I
held you close, close enough to lose.
Is that your jaw I see
as I make my way back home, thicker
for having grown into your father?
Our faces strangely
alike, I think, looking at the stein.
O shooting star
that fell in my eyes and through my body.
Unendurable. I can’t forget.
I gaze into my drink. I am still a child.
An die Musik [To music]
by Dan Kraines
—after Rainer Maria Rilke
A woodpecker chucks its head against a tree.
I wake up under a yoghurt sky and hear rain
where summer has ended, in the bull rush
and spruce; my obsessions
leave, like tropical storms.
Feelings for you? You raw my nerves against
granite, but won’t cut;
I tremble in my thicket of
red berry and thorn, like a vein.
Gravel road. Blue shale
along the river. You
brought me into your forest
beyond where anyone can see. You
with your heart of disaster, knees
against chest, leapt.
I know that I
give in: don’t drink
from the creek, you told
me as I knelt.
Descending more deeply into your deep
ravine, your joy is in the music of distance
and air: hungry, strung up, set to burn.
Yellow primrose light walls at my shoulder
blades, the creek far below forks and
unforks, a mystical promise,
you make me known to angels
—and I hear their lightning.
About the author
Dan Kraines is a queer poet of Viennese, Bolivian, and Ukrainian heritage. He lives in an old tenement building on the Lower East Side. The titles of these poems come from Rilke, but they queer his themes. Dan teaches creative writing at FIT. You can find him @dan_kraines and get Licht + his new chapbook, Jaffa.