Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash
We are not fighting as it gets
dark in the A & P parking lot. We are
eating the whole bag, no-one
tells us not to. Ribbed paper label,
loud price & eyehole torn open
on the E-brake. On which letters claim
what we swallow is candy peanuts but we
know we're eating minutes of not
fighting against everyone. Piece
after piece. From pole-tops vapor
snaps on & argues with it getting
dark. Till they're gone: like no
color in the natural world, hollowed
orange or ghost taupe, 16 oz.
for a dollar on the dollar candy rack.
Your powers rise above me like someone
who walks up the side of a building.
Back from another day you made
student shadows pass across a gym
floor leaping in your department of old windows
& dance. Defeat is stretched in every
direction like blacktop striped to show where
to stop. But we cheat it with corn
syrup shot into peanut shapes
that came off a metal belt at a bottom
wage. I forgive you for before, your fury
spilled into me like a firefighter's hose
thrashing at danger. Now streetlights
drift past your sadness driving us
home. From side streets drivers fly at us
like hockey players. I have no-one if I don't
have you. The plate set before me,
my one room. I put on a shining
hat of your broken heart.
Dan Alter’s first collection “My Little Book of Exiles” won the Poetry Prize for the 2022 Anne and Robert Cowan Writer’s Awards. He lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley and makes his living as an IBEW electrician.