Vox Populi
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Daniel Lawless: Family Photographs: My Brother, Solar Eclipse, 1965
In a year, Haldol, ECT, the closed gates of a sanitarium.
But for now—how happy you were. To be eleven and unconcerned
For once with school, the Cubs, who punched who.
For a few minutes to be unlearned, to be taught
A new world. O, distant boy, how marvelous
It all must have been, to be turned into a ghoul with your friends,
To spurn the murmur of grown-ups with their highballs and hair
On the deck for a lowering sky burned sepia, orange.
At three o’clock to feel yourself disappear inside yourself —
To cast no shadow. And – so long ago now
How did you put it? —the delicious, insistent thought
What if it stays like this? To yearn and yet not to know yet
What that yearning meant.
Copyright 2024 Daniel Lawless. From I Tell You This Now (Červená Barva Press, 2024).
Daniel Lawless is the author of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With. He is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry.
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Highballs and hair. I see it and cry.
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What a haunting poem, Danny, just *so* powerful! That little boy, dear, dear child — “O, distant boy,”…
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Hesrtbreaking, Danny. Just an exquisite poem. All the best, and thanks for all you do for poetry!
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Poetry strange and beautifully made. Goes with the “sister“ poem which I also read, having lost a cousin that way. Incidents of being and non-being that comprise the place in our hearts we’re from—child yet frozen within.
As always, thankyou this morning.
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Lovely, perceptive comment, Sean. Thank you!
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