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It’s what I don’t want to talk about.
It’s what I don’t understand, or else
what hurts me, and so, what I avoid.
I would rather discuss how good that
handcabbage is from the new Chinese
restaurant. Or how strange it is to listen
to a baseball game on the radio that has
crowd noise piped into the public address
because no one is in the stadium, because
there are no tickets being sold to the game.
I worry that my friends think of me like
a dog with a bad case of fear aggression.
But of course I won’t bring it up to them.
I think I might feel better if I got some
work done—some writing, some music.
Or maybe it would just make things worse.
There are fleeting moments when I forget.
And I’m alive with my realms of being.
Before reality returns. This new living.
Is something burning? Is something here
on fire? It smells like something here is
burning or on fire. It might be in my head.
Scott Silsbe is the author of Unattended Fire and The River Underneath the City. He lives and writes in Pittsburgh.
Copyright 2021 Scott Silsbe
Oh I feel that way more and more! The mush inside my head is excruciating. Yesterday I talked to a professor who had sent me a video of Ruth Stone and I had entirely forgotten that she had sent it and I had said I’d look at it the next morning. I can see my email, but I still don’t remember. This is getting scary!
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Me too, Barb!
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I love this poem!
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I do too, Joan!
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excellent poem!
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