Bryan Charles
On Being Gone a Year
But what if I had remained?, I kept thinking,
and that was the trouble.
One day the question went out of my head
like a dream down the shower drain.
Now I am not so much haunted by the past
as by the past and the future, which whispers
into my ear, but not in a way that inspires lust.
The next morning, as all those countless babies
took their sad first breaths in the world where
they will live and die, I fumbled with the coffee
maker, contemplated exercise or reading the paper.
Two cats shrieked in a language that turned
terrible and true. So what about next year?
Is it still alive in the minds of the conspiracy
theorists? Will I accept as joy the confusion
of stumbling among those tourists, cutting
a path between the hot dog carts? We are at
an obvious disadvantage here, the bank machines
will come alive and crush our skulls. In a way,
I look forward to bleeding to death, to being missed.
Bryan Charles lives in Brooklyn, NY, where "Falls Apart" by Sugar Ray occasionally plays. He has been previously published in Third Coast and The Columbia Poetry Review, and he used to co-edit and write a literary magazine called Rocket Fuel (before the current Rocket Fuel). This poem, and I, Superman, also appearing in this issue, were originally part of a larger project called "Dormitory Songs", a book-length kiss-off to his adolescence.
Email Bryan Charles at charles@gumballpoetry.com.
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