Revelation in Slow Time
       

Here, where no one is in a hurry,
the exiled generals are reminiscing again, a melancholia
perfect for busses and trains.

It had to be just so,
after the fact.

We wanted to live there
but they told us it keeps falling down. And I like being there
but it keeps falling down.

Perhaps one or the other of us
had the concept of partitions, or the remainders
of partitions, in mind, marbles
and dice that can be moved around
in various combinations.

I will steal these clothes I'm wearing
and call myself by a new name, for instance.

Or perhaps I was not nourished well
as a child. Perhaps I'm a foreigner,
or wishing I were a foreigner. It's how acting works.

Stranger things have happened, they say
from out of the application of our emergency
here in this country to which the generals flee.

So what do we say to them?

The children have all disappeared
years ago. We pass their pictures
back and forth. We
place them on shelves
so that they're not alone.

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Copyright © 2012 G.C. Waldrep & John Gallaher All rights reserved
from Burnside Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission