Trent Busch
Dates in Parentheses
One theme we never tire of is
the person talking of death, dead,
laughing in a swing just last week
about the skinny one in dark
hood tying our hands, now taking
a last ride out the gravelly
driveway, black everywhere, children
in little suits and short dresses;
or author or preacher, alive,
reminding us of its presence
never more than thoughtbeat away,
soon with dates in parentheses.
If we do not view the subject
with ourselves at the other end
of the joke, we continue, like them,
with sidelong looks at its shadow.
Just why it is we remain on
this side we know from having once
or twice ventured too close to the edge,
leaning toward the soft clouds calling
us to summer days before we
sailed out and looked down at fierce hands
spidering the far wall and woke as
if from nightmare, not to return,
or not quite anyway, except
in fantasy, dead but not dead,
delighted at remorse on faces
of the ones who took us lightly
and broke our hearts. Yet we never
tire, and listen, the way we watched
as a child the oak tree redden,
not guessing its leaves without fire.
Trent Busch's poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation, Threepenny Review, North American Review, Chicago Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Kenyon Review, American Scholar, Shenandoah, and more recently in Notre Dame Review, Evansville Review, Agni Online, Grove Review, Boston Review, Sou’wester, and The Hudson Review.
Return to November 2015 Edition
One theme we never tire of is
the person talking of death, dead,
laughing in a swing just last week
about the skinny one in dark
hood tying our hands, now taking
a last ride out the gravelly
driveway, black everywhere, children
in little suits and short dresses;
or author or preacher, alive,
reminding us of its presence
never more than thoughtbeat away,
soon with dates in parentheses.
If we do not view the subject
with ourselves at the other end
of the joke, we continue, like them,
with sidelong looks at its shadow.
Just why it is we remain on
this side we know from having once
or twice ventured too close to the edge,
leaning toward the soft clouds calling
us to summer days before we
sailed out and looked down at fierce hands
spidering the far wall and woke as
if from nightmare, not to return,
or not quite anyway, except
in fantasy, dead but not dead,
delighted at remorse on faces
of the ones who took us lightly
and broke our hearts. Yet we never
tire, and listen, the way we watched
as a child the oak tree redden,
not guessing its leaves without fire.
Trent Busch's poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation, Threepenny Review, North American Review, Chicago Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Kenyon Review, American Scholar, Shenandoah, and more recently in Notre Dame Review, Evansville Review, Agni Online, Grove Review, Boston Review, Sou’wester, and The Hudson Review.
Return to November 2015 Edition