Spoon River Poetry Review
Editors' Prize winner
A Moment for Authentic Shine
This is the greatest moment of your life,
said the voice both familiar and distant,
like a childhood
friend become spokesperson for a cleaning
product—
which caused the many hats to turn in
many directions
and one robed arm to extend.
And what after all had been passing?
The sounds birds made often seemed more
cogent
than the swirl of argument, a cyclone in
a sandbox.
So much management we ought to have degrees
was a type of joke made at outmoded
parties.
Still with shades and declarations
echoes of heroic solos translated out of
urgent decades
while almost unnoticed, pensive tunes
accumulate in the mix
like thunder clouds on these warmer days. Regardless,
the names come unpinned, stars die, a closetful
of semi-
recognizable jackets and hats be-speaks
the by-gone, and yet the baffling
rekindling of romance
may justify the maintenance of a
hairstyle.
A certain heart medication—no, I was
afraid to say
a certain heart, beating in the chest of
a certain girl.
To say heart in that trite way, and girl
when by now she’s fifty,
and real when the elapsing of all things into
void
has been made abundantly clear. But I knew her
and she seemed real, and at thirty still
childlike—
a trait adorable in women, rather of concern
in men
say the conservatives but look who’s
ogling
the ballplayers around the pool table.
Any slogan invites rebuttal, and a spin
into personal views
often doubles futile conversation. One might live
consuming nothing but packaged goods and
still
in that moment of late afternoon crash—
over-heated, nauseated by persistent
sexual memory,
blinded by sun, buffeted by wind—unfairly
rely
on that prideful sense of authenticity
so prized in our time that it could be
said to float,
invisible of course, above a century’s
worth of steaming wrecks—
cloud of elemental and reckless
identity unwarranted, silver-lined
illusion of nobility—
until geographies choke in the torrent,
shrines assembled from knick-knacks
manufactured
by prisoner children dissolve
and in our true magical forest, blossoms
wreathed by small creatures that worked
in tandem with our spirits become
as we become atmosphere.
as we become atmosphere.
Comments
Post a Comment