A Peer Among Friends

And after a few years, he

began talking at the windshield.

he asked if he might

tell me about not hearing,

and how we know we think

that aphasia voluntaria

is a trick of the movies,

a little plot point for the theater

like making life, but why

shouldn’t it be. the point of stopping

living is, in this context,

that someone might insist

you start. usually the father

dies, i recall, or a child goes

to the graveyard. we were coming

back from the wedding

or going to it, a likely

disaster. everyone

wrote an occasional poem

but the occasion, it seemed,

was to insist they’re friends.

now in the mind, as fast

as it goes, clear chatter came

up over the radio except

it couldn’t have been

the radio because now

we don’t even have that. 

symptoms. if you can’t enjoy them 

tell them they don’t exist

or better yet, have someone else

try. when absence is what is 

present, we can go on, like we live 

in public, where everyone knows 

about your sick

but this they don’t—

it seems progressive.

i don’t know what made him 

return to hearing,

after i was ordered to Alice

she ordered me too.

naming the friends, hers,

mine, no matter

who died, ours, who she says 

aren’t dead anyway,

but we are. and now i am

to think of how to say it by

when it’s that time again

and so the clusters, not

three but five, the events

they come, here and now