While you’re driving cattle north to the railhead at Kansas City, I’m manning a barricade in Paris during the Franco- Prussian War. With mutual sighs we lower our books and assume the grim expression of incumbents. Easier to read about the past (with its shovel-shaped beards and crisp fabrics stretched over hoop skirts, battles and deposed emperors, beheadings, coronations, hangings, shuffling of national boundaries) than to confess the cruel and petty moments we live as if swimming through a sea of spilled molasses. In the age of Rimbaud the streets bristled with rifles and pikes. Slogans wrinkled daily discourse while Rimbaud sampled women as only a selfish boy could. In your book, the muddy crossing of the Red River marks a moment of laughter and pride. In mine, the commune poses a threat crushed with thousands of futile deaths. We should break for lunch and face, if not the onrush of history, our rapid aging, our crumpled hides almost dry enough to nail to the side of our neighbor’s barn. We’re twice as old as Rimbaud dying of gangrene. Instead of trading in coffee and weapons, he should have been a cowpoke sporting the dust of the old West, adorning the pages of your book. Then he could have died a man’s death brawling in a ten-cent saloon, his poems blowing down the street, defiantly scrawled in blood. William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Dogs Don’t Care (2022). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals. Hobbled By a narrow Stoic universe Owing nothing To anyone Alone On the cobbled stones With an airy desperation Firm in my pocket And hidden From everything Worth hiding from From anything Unseen Below the waterline Along the swift Swollen river With the dark currents Of old torments And the windswept spaces Beneath bridges Pulling me helplessly Into the sinewed arms Of my Paris As the copper sun Sets John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology. He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children. |
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Photos used under Creative Commons from Michel Hébert, brighterdaygang, aivars_k, rchdj10, dalbera