Certainty No. __
That some will yet wind down
their unstoried days
alone in a transient hotel
with a felled wasps’ nest
of stinging thoughts
of did’s and didn’t’s
buzzing and circling like
incalculable times before
and that when at last peopled
thoughts finally intrude again
they will not belong
to those lost few they loved
they will be strangers’
uniformed strangers
who will thumb
through their thin wallet
and scattered papers
searching in vain
for “next of kin”
while trying not to breathe
what little will by then
be almost all that is left of them
Loss and Other Accidents
If I, for half my life, have made the mistake
of believing that who and what I lost
at twenty-five was essence and not accident—
not just at the time, not only when it happened,
but always, from that moment until
the moment before the moment
before this—can it still be untrue?
Or is it now too late to make the adjustment
in who and what I am and was—
and, most critically, who I can be
from now until that moment when
the loss of me becomes another accident
and not essence, I hope and almost pray,
in the lives of those who follow me?
We Arrived This Afternoon
We arrived this afternoon
My father and I from Vermont
We took the shuttle from Penn Station
To Grand Central and then
Hopped on the Metro North
Just like we used to
After a day of adventure in the city
My favorite being the Museum of Natural History
Then a stop at the Super-8 store
To pick up another Chaplin short
And a Universal monster movie
But there was no time for that today
(And besides the Super-8 store is long gone)
No it was straight to Pelham for us
As fast as the train allowed
We got off at the station and started
The steep walk up the hill to 44 Clifford Ave
Where my mother (why not)
We knew was waiting with a meal
Fit for twelve plus three desserts
Only somehow we couldn’t find it
The house or the street or my mother
Or the meal we just kept walking
Up that hill which was nice
For a while as it gave us more time
To reminisce about all the things
That had happened and unhappened
And happened again but after a while
Our legs got tired and his legs weren’t
Working too well anyway his feet and ankles
Being horribly swollen from the cold in VT
And his toes were frostbitten and the end
Of his nose too but we kept on because well
We somehow knew that if we stopped
Even for a second it might also stop
This reunion might end time
Might undo itself and spring backwards into
Some other nightmarish version
Of things where there were no trains
And no walks and no ridiculously overdone meals
Just a perpetual nothingness
Unspooling on an endless path uphill
That somehow would still end too soon
So we kept walking and are walking
Together still and we won’t stop
We won’t stop until nothing we just won’t
Artists & Writers in This Issue
| Velibor Baćo | Alexis Krasilovsky | Nathaniel Lachenmeyer | Jeff Larason | Lisa Suhair Majaj | Liliana Mercau | Susanna Fiona Murray | Laura Ann Reed | Michael Roberts | John Whalen-Bridge | Hilmi M. Zawati |
