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— after Stacey Waite
There are certain ways this poem should sound but those sounds don’t exist so I
suppose it’s the responsibility of the silence on our bodies to compensate for this:
the silence between your body and the water from the shower the madness in the silent
architecture of how after two years you barely remember how her voice sounded
between American Spirit cigarettes between Oakland and the Hill
where some buildings are cut in half and you can see the outlines of fireplaces
the silence in the fire that is no longer a fire that is no longer a place
the silence in how we understand that those fireplaces are us these days.
Last Tuesday when you woke up you could have sworn that it was twenty twelve
and that there was no hair on my chin [You preferred me that way]
a few days ago I kissed a woman and the hair on my chin left her skin tingling.
− Jude Waldo
Jude Waldo has served as the second line editor for the Anthology Voices from the Attic. He lives in Castle Shannon.
This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2016.
I found this poem very interesting due to the concepts concerning sound,maybe even language in the first stanza. And, silence as representational of interchange between two people. Few poems deal with sound in this manner. It is a unique vantage point. The halved buildings, their sliced in half histories also caught my attention. Great poem. Honored to read it.