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Featured Poet: john sweet
remembering the room of empty chairs
and the way
no one spoke of the blood
although it was everywhere
the way you cried
only for yourself
all of the reasons we
found to hate each other
portrait of the past
being eclipsed by the future
this man who says it
makes him feel better to
think of my writing as fiction
his wife
who refuses to speak my name
and all of the reasons she's
invented for hating me
all of the ones she
never had to
the way none of it matters
when april walks into
the room
with apologies to sonic youth's daydream nation,
and to
man ray
think of sunlight
of this teenage girl beaten
with a baseball bat
in some other part of america
the voice that tells her
it's only a joke
the number of roads that
go from here to there
all of these crosses
rising up blindly
from the filthy ground
lament
nothing beautiful
even in sunlight
the sick and the crippled
crawling down these sidewalks
and the news that the mother
has disappeared
the admission that
no one expects to see her again
all of the shadows cast by
whatever
she's left behind
small untitled poem,
with or without a deeper meaning
and you turn to your wife and
her face is gone
and the blood is everywhere and
all you can do is scream in
fear or in anger
all you can do is stand in
god's shadow
or squarely on his throat
all you can do is stand
anything else i've
ever told you is a lie
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