Hello, blog readers! I hope you’re having a lovely week. Now that it’s Wednesday, it’s time to feature yet another poem that you may not have heard of yet. As always, this week’s featured poem comes to us from Poetry Daily, which is a great site for finding new poetry. This week we’re featuring a poem entitled Pluralities by Ralph Adamo.
According to his bio page on the Louisiana Poetry Project site, Ralph Adamo has written six poetry collections, including The Tiger Who Spoke French, Hanoi Rose (New Orleans Poetry Journal, 1989), and Waterblind (Portals Press, 2002). He began teaching English at Xavier University in Fall 2007, and has edited Xavier Review since Spring 2011. He has won an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Louisiana Endowment for the Arts, and from the Faulkner Society.
Pluralities by Ralph Adamo
I hate that you are on the other side this evening
If I go somewhere to cry for you how will I stop
I hope this finds you well. It’s been too long,
I typed when you were already gone.Listening to you talk
over there is like
listening to waterI compose
you are here
music breaking whitely
one track crossing over another
to reach disasterShooed from the blues I stand
against one breeze
and feel the summer’s cascade
buggy and wet in my bloodI a sunken man with an old nose and long eyes
wind-shredded
used to the way little becomes less
unprepared for bounty
whittling sorrow down to its toothsome size****
The little house of my dead first wife
blows me a kiss as I go past
on wheels, the sidewalk cracks
one more lame joke to boot, and
then I am on the other side, again.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s featured poem! For more posts like this, click here.
– Jet Fuel Blog Editor, Mary Egan
