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No wonder.
Clever tactics on a treacherous route–
Today the mailman came late. Tomorrow
A younger man will come even later.
The labrador showed his confusion at
The gate when his daily postdate went un-
Rewarded.
Smart tactic.
Trespasser gaslighting the sentinel–
It was the 1980s and we were
Spinning a cold war on a warm globe with
Mutual Assured Destruction, material
Devotion, and a treat for the
Mis-treated.
Or it was
2022 and it was only
The world tour of the same show with different
Players on different stages–same plot though,
Same blocking.
Curious.
The night the younger man came, I made the
Old recipe, and it was winter there
In Russia, a vegetable massacre
Occurring in a famine year; I
Dreamt of a mushroom growing from the top
Of my head and woke to cancer in the
Late summer.
Driving to Providence and listening to
Erasure. Innocents. Overwritten.
Another
Season (the bloody borscht of winter’s past),
Saint Petersburg in rain, through a body
Bag thawing on the counter–all the while
She cauterized vessels, I could smell the
Flesh burning and could feel the Four Horsemen
Of the Apocalypse pushing the folds
Of my scalp back together. She scooped me
Like the soft insides of boiled beets, but it
Was the stitching back together that was
Her true treachery.
It didn’t have to be, but could just be
Nothing.
Another
Postdate in another town, another
State, murder in the park or meltdown on
The river, atrocities unexamined,
Gorky or Chernobyl, that would take us
Another 40 years or more from
Pryp’yat to the mouth of the Kalmius
To notice on the shores of
Mariupol.
Ignorance.
We blamed it on our parents while our own
Complacency bloomed; we once survived
Atomic threat, and so we took smaller deaths for
Victories.
Oiled and naked
Screaming with delight, we would squirm through
Their arms and run free into the sun. Now
We all sit in a waiting room like cartoon
Characters after a bar brawl, a
Bandaged ear, a tourniquet head, a face,
A nose–
Looking at
Each other without looking, something
Passing between us that felt like a concert
Of collective past, I could hear the
Radio from the nurse’s station, Boys Don’t
Cry, The Cure.
Originally published in The Arlington Literary Journal, Issue 206, February 2025
© 2025, Tom Pearson
Photo, “Ash Fork,” © 2011, Tom Pearson