The Shape of Myths

Will Cordeiro

The trees bend back and eyeless
leaves flash golden in the dark:

awake again the same long night
you walk from room to room—

within the house within the dream
which is the old room from before

the one you wake to every night
a house assuming doors that lock

behind you so you can’t explain
why there’s no breeze, no moon

no smear upon the windows, no—
no room at all as in this dream

where eyeless leaves flash golden
from trees that bend the dark.

Will Cordeiro has work appearing in Agni, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Sycamore Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Will’s collection Trap Street won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and is grateful for a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Will teaches in the Honors College at Northern Arizona University.