HALF OF ALL MARRIAGES END IN DEATH
by Gary McDowell
My best friend texts me: She says the papers
will be here in a few weeks. My mom and dad
when I was three; my brother just seven
months post-I-Dos; most of my friends,
half my colleagues; most celebrities; my dad,
again. The problem isn’t love–it never has
been; the problem is time. Like a watch
two minutes fast, we live in the future,
can’t worry about the present when the past
dictates it anyway. What did one fatalist
say to the other? It’s too late for me,
and also for you. What we ration now
will run out later. Cottonmouth, papercuts,
hangnails: all minor annoyances, but they
can ruin your day just the same. The gate
squeaks when it opens, rattles when it shuts;
the distance between the two tells me
who has come home. At just after 2:00AM,
the moon aligns with the bay windows,
and for a few moments, the light ribbons
the walls, makes of the room a home.
Gary McDowell is the author, most recently, of Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020), winner of the 2019 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. My other books include Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017); Mysteries in a World that Thinks There Are None (Burnside Review Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Burnside Review Book Award; Weeping at a Stranger’s Funeral (Dream Horse Press, 2014); and American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry. He is also the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010).
