by Bill Neumire
Reserve:
Derive
God by committee:
our final conundrum:
Nothing is happening:
It’s a hard job:
Rose petals serve the purpose:
They have no intrinsic value
left alone:
Value derives solely from our confidence:
The aura of uncertainty
creates all kinds of victims
Antistrophe:
You love your wife: You hold her knee & scroll old pictures of yourselves: first date at the Chinese restaurant, engagement at the show, first house under the birch tree, the full fatness of the beginning.
con
Let us briefly
question
hardship:
water
etc:
bad news:
skills are what matter:
there is a
sad fact
lost
in the music
trains run:
you can pay off the local warlord
and answer
steep and treacherous
outposts of disorder:
an old joke:
mosquito nets
used as wedding veils
Antistrophe:
You have bad news but have forgotten it in the music, so you just carry it now like a package under your coat: You’re dancing in the sunny afternoon after all & the street is clean & empty but there are neighbors in the windows cheering you on: they all have letters of loss in their hands, news of terrible burden, but they see you smiling & they remember another time together.
****
Bill Neumire’s first poetry collection, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award, and his second book, #TheNewCrusades, was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review Online, Beloit Poetry Journal, and West Branch. In addition to writing, he also served as an assistant editor for the literary magazine Verdad and as a reviewer for Vallum.