by Jéanpaul Ferro
We were all born from the sons of pain,
an L of stars that graced the four corners
of the nighttime sky,
Helen, we called one;
she looked like a finger pointing right back at us,
Robert was another;
he looked like a lost man in the dead of winter,
all of these legends that we made up for ourselves,
so we could all go on believing,
but don’t fool yourself: mankind isn’t that smart,
we can’t even build something without first tearing
something else good down:
we dig a hole in the ground to put a building up,
we leave our beautiful wives for a much better wife,
we die in the millions within our wars, so there can be
peace,
the constellations, the stars, how come they all know?
they are here, and they will be here, long after us;
and they wait in silence every day,
in silence like they did before any of us ever came
into the narrative,
where maybe we should have been left standing only
slightly off-stage.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
A 10-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jéanpaul Ferro’s work has appeared on National Public Radio, Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Emerson Review, Connecticut Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Portland Monthly, Rattle Magazine, Arts & Understanding Magazine, and others. He is the author of All The Good Promises (Plowman Press, 1994), Becoming X (BlazeVox Books, 2008), You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers (Thumbscrew Press, 2009), Hemispheres (Maverick Duck Press, 2009) Essendo Morti – Being Dead (Goldfish Press, 2009), nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry; and Jazz (Honest Publishing, 2011), nominated for both the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize and the 2012 Griffin Prize in Poetry. He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. Website: www.jeanpaulferro.com * E-mail: jeanpaulferro@netzero.net
Last updated August 30, 2011