Those Pictures

 

I leaf through the book. Photos. Black & white.

Wide-eyed moments of grace, an unnamed war,

stately decay, dead men, failures of light,

teenagers with guns laughing through mascara

smoke, blood but it’s silver. Lovely blood.

I was there, he says — I saw. Yes, it’s so:

he’s a prodigy of witness. This mud,

he says, grinning. You’re in here, too — I know

you know my ex. He points — a beauty too

soon gone to hell, hollow-eyed, a mess

beside a man (it’s not me). When you went

there, I ask, when you married her, did you

know she was a junkie?

                                             Oh, sure, yes,

he laughs, but I didn’t know what it meant.

 

 

© Michael Fleming

Brattleboro, Vermont

May 2011

 

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