...
Start with things we know
but can’t name. Sacred things
our words have failed to find,
falling headlong through open fingers
into a rush of sun-warmed summer rivers.
We live on the suburban branch,
navigating in naked vessels made by human hands,
yearning to be clothed in something eternal
as we turn toward cooler waters
that crackle with the static of old vinyl dreams.
As a child, I swam the other way, upriver,
fighting the currents because I could.
Life was made of named things then,
things we didn’t know, some of them scary.
I’ll name one: Viet Nam.
But we were nourished by secret instincts:
suburban rivers were just a surface thing;
underneath, the world moved in circles,
a giant turntable turning too slow
to make much sense to children. Still –
those who named things expected
us to be part of their revolution,
to let their needles make impressions,
inject us, wear down our grooves,
so that all lives crackled the same,
eventually.
...
James Lilliefors is a poet, journalist, and novelist, who has written for Door Is a Jar, Ploughshares, The Washington Post, Third Wednesday, Anti-Heroin Chic, Salvation South, and elsewhere. He was a 2024 Best of the Net poetry nominee. His first poetry chapbook, SUDDEN SHADOWS, will be published in October by Finishing Line Press.