Poem: You Are The Place You Cannot Move

Credit: Panagiotis Siokas

You wake up healthy
but you don't feel right. Now everything's
backwards and you're thinking of someone to blame.

And you do, you're lucky,
drinking coffee was easy, the traffic's
moving along, you're like
everyone else just trying to get through the day
and the place you're dreaming of seems possible--
somewhere to get to.

All you really know
is that it hurts here, the way feelings
are bigger than we are, and a woman's face
in a third-story window, her limp hair
and the pots of red geraniums luring you
into her suffering until you're walking on roads
inscribed in your own body. The maps
you never speak of. Intersections, train stations,
roadside benches, the names of places and
people you've known all bearing the weight
of cashing a check or your having to eat something,
of glimpsing the newspaper's ghoulish headlines.

Like everyone else, you think,
the struggle is toward a better time, though
no pressure surrounds the house you were born in.
Cool, quieter, a vast primitive light
where nothing happens but the sound
of your sole self breathing.
And you've decisions to make. Isn't that why
you've come? with a bald-headed man at the bar
and your friends all over the place, anxious,
tired, a little less sturdy than you'd hoped for
and needing someone to kick around, someone to love.

~ Ralph Angel

Poem: You Are The Place You Cannot Move

Credit: Panagiotis Siokas

You wake up healthy
but you don't feel right. Now everything's
backwards and you're thinking of someone to blame.

And you do, you're lucky,
drinking coffee was easy, the traffic's
moving along, you're like
everyone else just trying to get through the day
and the place you're dreaming of seems possible--
somewhere to get to.

All you really know
is that it hurts here, the way feelings
are bigger than we are, and a woman's face
in a third-story window, her limp hair
and the pots of red geraniums luring you
into her suffering until you're walking on roads
inscribed in your own body. The maps
you never speak of. Intersections, train stations,
roadside benches, the names of places and
people you've known all bearing the weight
of cashing a check or your having to eat something,
of glimpsing the newspaper's ghoulish headlines.

Like everyone else, you think,
the struggle is toward a better time, though
no pressure surrounds the house you were born in.
Cool, quieter, a vast primitive light
where nothing happens but the sound
of your sole self breathing.
And you've decisions to make. Isn't that why
you've come? with a bald-headed man at the bar
and your friends all over the place, anxious,
tired, a little less sturdy than you'd hoped for
and needing someone to kick around, someone to love.

~ Ralph Angel

Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In

Photo Credit: Ahmad Kavousian

You simply go out and shut the door

without thinking. And when you look back

at what you’ve done

it’s too late. If this sounds

like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had

a key were away. I tried and tried

the lower windows. Stared

inside at the sofa, plants, the table

and chairs, the stereo set-up.

My coffee cup and ashtray waited for me

on the glass-topped table, and my heart

went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,

or something like that. After all,

this wasn’t so bad.

Worse things had happened. This

was even a little funny. I found the ladder.

Took that and leaned it against the house.

Then climbed in the rain to the deck,

swung myself over the railing

and tried the door. Which was locked,

of course. But I looked in just the same

at my desk, some papers, and my chair.

This was the window on the other side

of the desk where I’d raise my eyes

and stare out when I sat at that desk.

This is not like downstairs, I thought.

This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,

from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.

I don’t even think I can talk about it.

I brought my face close to the glass

and imagined myself inside,

sitting at the desk. Looking up

from my work now and again.

Thinking about some other place

and some other time.

The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.

Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.

Even though a wave of grief passed through me.

Even though I felt violently ashamed

of the injury I’d done back then.

I bashed that beautiful window.

And stepped back in.

~ Raymond Carver