Eliot Cardinaux




Tomato


Upward, Snow

That year it snowed backwards, or upside down. Jeff lost his sense of smell. I was grabbing at
quarters, surrounded by her shoes. The sun blinding, above the clouds. Print isn’t ideal. Wind
still isn’t a metaphor. I wasn’t shy, but scared. Stretched out over the barline of noon. Derivative
as it is, I enter a building behind the bank. What’s a fire escape to you? Now that the hawk is
perched there. Under the overpass, where it never rains. The lights don’t come on.
It’s time. Look at this balloon. I can’t pretend we didn’t notice. Run a loose raspberry across your lips. It
was not without pain, but the pain was quick. Take pleasure in watching the factory burn. It’s
cold, even by the window.




Eliot Cardinaux, born in Dayton, Ohio in 1984, is an American pianist, poet, & composer currently living in Northampton, MA. He studied jazz piano at the Manhattan School of Music, finishing his undergraduate degree in contemporary improvisation at the New England Conservatory in Boston in 2016. He is the founder of The Bodily Press through which he has released the work of other poets and musicians, as well as several of his own projects, including, most recently, the poetry chapbook Becoming Stranger, & a double album of his own poetry and free-improvisations, What the Wildflower Witnessed, as part of the international ensemble Our Hearts as Thieves. He is also the editor of the online journal Partitions, published through the Bodily Press. His poetry has been published in Caliban Online, Big Big Wednesday, Bloodroot Literary Journal, White Heat, Jacket 2, Hollow, and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. Eliot is a current candidate for an MFA in Poetry at UMass Amherst, under Peter Gizzi, Dara Wier, Ocean Vuong, and others, where he also teaches writing, & was recently awarded the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award for poetry, judged by Fanny Howe. He lives with his partner, Jade Wollin.
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