share


Endings

Everything I’m writing has been short recently.

I don’t like to write endings. I’m bad at them.

 

Endings must have a stake in what happened,

and I’ve never been interested in what happened.

 

Where have we been? Endings ask.

Where must we go from here? They answer.

 

Some people, lucky ones, can only write endings—

as if forever in state of taking stock and gazing out,

 

as if to fall, to fear, these things could go on

indefinitely, as if shadow were just another word for shade.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is a writer from New York. His work also appears in Ambit, the Boston Review, poets.org, and elsewhere.



READ NEXT

poetry

September 2011

First Blimp

Joshua Trotter

poetry

September 2011

Removing colour from my thoughts, I formed a winter ball. I threw it. The dead were uncounted. There was...

poetry

May 2012

Monopoly (after Ashbery)

Sarah Howe

poetry

May 2012

I keep everything until the moment it’s needed. I am the glint in your bank manager’s eye. I never...

Art

March 2011

Gabriel Orozco: Cosmic Matter and Other Leftovers

Rye Dag Holmboe

Art

March 2011

‘To live,’ writes Walter Benjamin, ‘means to leave traces’. As one might expect, Benjamin’s observation is not without a...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required