Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Jan 17, 2021 - 11:54am
One Night
by Jeremy Voigt
The car crossed two lanes of traffic
and a grass median before plowing head-on into me, killing my wife, unborn child, and myself. Before I died I touched the shoulder of a policeman, felt the sure strength of his muscles, heard the only word he spoke, "Jesus," and I smiled because I stopped believing in him long ago. He mistook my smile for something positive and not listless irony, and I tried to correct him, but my throat stopped. Red lights. Blue lights. Star's gases. I walked home. My wife wandered off into a river to give birth. I began calling my friends: "We are all dead," I said into the phone. I let them cry or exalt in turn, taking note. I didn't know it would be this simple. I slipped into a midnight robe, poked holes in a black sheet, tore into a loaf of bread. Wandered off yeast-heavy neither rising nor falling.
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive. And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind us—listen! All the long echoes, sing the same delight, This Shortest Day, As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace. And now so do we, here, now, This year and every year. Welcome, Yule!
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive. And when the new yearâs sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind usâlisten! All the long echoes, sing the same delight, This Shortest Day, As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace. And now so do we, here, now, This year and every year. Welcome, Yule!
A silence slipping around like death, Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath; One group of trees, lean, naked and cold, Inking their cress 'gainst a sky green-gold; One path that knows where the corn flowers were; Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir; And over it softly leaning down, One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 7, 2020 - 8:07pm
Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans, Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white, Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads Tucked or cresting or busy underwater. Useless to think you'll park and capture it More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there, A hurry through which known and strange things pass As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
The heart of the matter, the ghost of a chance, A tremor, a fever, an ache in the chest. The moth and the candle beginning their dance, A cool white sheet on which nothing will rest.
Come sit beside me. I've waited alone. What you need to confess I already know. The scent of your shame is a heavy cologne That lingers for hours after you go.
The dregs of the bottle, the end of the line, The laggard, the loser, the last one to know. The unfinished book, the dead-end sign, And last summer's garden buried in snow.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Dec 6, 2020 - 9:51am
The Heart of the Matter
The heart of the matter, the ghost of a chance, A tremor, a fever, an ache in the chest. The moth and the candle beginning their dance, A cool white sheet on which nothing will rest.
Come sit beside me. I've waited alone. What you need to confess I already know. The scent of your shame is a heavy cologne That lingers for hours after you go.
The dregs of the bottle, the end of the line, The laggard, the loser, the last one to know. The unfinished book, the dead-end sign, And last summer's garden buried in snow.
Location: Half inch above the K/T boundary Gender:
Posted:
Nov 29, 2020 - 4:46am
You Asked For It by George Bilgere
There was a show on TV called You Asked For It. Viewers would write in and ask to see unusual things, such as the world’s greatest slingshot expert. I watched it every week on our humble Motorola, although the only episode I can remember now is the one about the slingshot expert. He was a grown man, as I recall, and he lived in an ordinary place like New Jersey. At a distance of ten or twenty paces he could pulverize one marble with another. He could hit a silver dollar tossed into the air. He was the kind of father I wanted to have, an expert shot, never missing. And I think of him now, perhaps long dead, or frail and gray, his gift forgotten. Just another old guy on a park bench in Fort Lauderdale, fretting about Medicare, grateful for the sun on his back, his slingshot useless in this new world.
