EMMA POST

selections from The Year of Safe Lightning

*

Suppositions like ‘death wish’ and ‘finite’ and ‘put it past us.’ Tender sweet grasp and to ache

the ache of inquest and not answering with delight. Cold shouldered and I walked home with an

apple in my pocket. I kept taking it out on walks with me. Every day it gained new sensitivities

until finally I had to recognize it was:

> misunderstood

  > a lost cause

       >un-gallant                                                                                           >un-appled

.   >de-crisped

       >softened from            too much    touch    >

Pallbearer of a sky. This season of uneasy lighting shades us. Ineloquent we remembered the

flexible sun of last month and the safety in indoor bulbs the season before.

A pedantic brother of what aided us throughout the year. A silent halo to un-encumber all those

‘what a drag’ and ‘give it up for___!’ Parents dither and the memorial for the limo death was

held in the peace pagoda nearby. Limo memorial I serve drinks to the mourners and notice how

many hard bellies are in the room. It’s September and they will soon fade to softness. By touch

or other remedies.

.

*

> Could you hold on to this key for me?   >

As if I was more foreign to this place

Like underwater, or, sunfish unlock doors Now it’s like:

communicate through vastness

must pluck own plenitudes out of distance

 >highway 90 West

 two telephone calls through to my mother

 am i there      yet am i there       >

If it was midnight

the men arguing across the street

would be punching each other

    >   Into star-ness >

Midday becomes still at the basketball

court The victim of not-being-tall

weeps with a bag of potato chips and every

time is not enough Through the windows of

the parked sedan, not-speaking is always smashing

bottles, just like my father,

        >      this might make it the last one am i done    yet>

As if like at the meeting we both agreed: trust creates the best mistakes

That woman’s knee kept knocking against mine, a pen fell off my lap and I thought

the one it pointed at should be the one I sleep with later A boyfriend is just

a stranger you trusted you wanted next to you,

       >    am i his lover am

   i writing mine?     >

Some nights I walk late with the

dog and stare too long at windows

with people moving in them

I don’t know        >if I enjoy this                          I just           know I

    enjoy everything   >

As if thinking it was my father who taught me that we are linear. The road back to him looked that way

   >      this is what what i mean   am i     there   >

Oh, keys

and how

many will I leave in the safety of strangers If to

other strangers I will

point out the door

Emma Post is a writer and teacher living in Upstate NY. She received her MFA from Brown University and now works at an artist residency hosted in a haunted Shaker building as well as teaching writing at SUNY Albany.