"Dear Reader,"

[Another poem from Brittany Newmark—fantastic, & a privilege to post]


 Dear Reader,



Easy now, all I am going to do is talk

And not even say
                                One way
                                or the other that
                                The story does not end at the

                                                                Good-bye

Or the journey on a snowy evening alongside a vacant lot
                                                                                  in a city full of promise. 


No doubt, I have read too much
                                into our lives,
                                                  the lives of our family,
                                                  our friends
the tables we gather around.

The light accumulates and settles into the recesses of the room
And never exposes us to one another.

Friends, I am sorry I can’t stay
It is late.


Where have I been?
To Indiana and New Hampshire
Jerusalem, Ohio
Texas, Virginia twice
Each place a promise


And lived well enough to call it a life
A glow aloft

I’ve carried infants in my gut,
                                                                my arms,
                                                                my heart  still asleep
                                                                on my back
And been completely fulfilled by a fat fist no bigger than a baked roll
And clenched tight, alive.


A simple observation:
sunflowers growing in an open field always face east
And serve sometimes as the only compass
for the especially impoverished and misdirected.
                The ones that notice such things
                                as the tilt of a thousand flowers.


Reader,
                you know
                (as well as I,
                                before I had the words for it you knew)


                human hurt—
                                                                a water stain
                and that in those future beds of straw & hair every kiss will taste like ash.

I promise to no longer be fool-hearted

I promise to no longer mistake the swing of
a girl’s hips
                for some hint of melancholy

I promise to linger long enough to be taken
                                                                                                inside.

Brittany Newmark
© 2011