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You’re listening to Poetry Month on The Voice of Dog.
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This is Rob MacWolf your fellow traveler,
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and Today we present a poem
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by Æ et al., a poet composed of several dragons in a trench coat.
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Read by Yuugenshou,
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wolf of wanderlust
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Please enjoy “Memory”,
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a poem by Æ et al.
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Memory is full of holes.
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A temple missing color
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interpreted through a modern lens.
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Unnecessary moments
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committed to the shredder
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treasures locked away
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for a rainy day. Or at least,
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I assume. My earliest
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are of not remembering
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the time I had a lisp
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being the pink Power Ranger for Halloween.
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No one remembers their early childhood,
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I heard so that was me, at four
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five six eleven
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thirteen. I want to write horror
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words to be remembered in nightmares
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birthing panic attacks on the train
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imagining bones broken and limbs tied.
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Write about childhood fears,
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the greats say but I don’t want to write about losing the house to the bank
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not getting into college
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being trapped in a small town forever.
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So I grab my shovel and dig.
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Mental permafrost halts my blade
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but I see glitter past the ice
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broken glass and shattered stone.
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The Geiger counter crackles to life
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this is not a place of honor
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no great deeds commemorated here.
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The beryllium shell breeches the surface
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a memory of not-remembering.
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A girl afraid of her father
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doing things she had no words for
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but only colors shapes
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impressions and roiling doubt.
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“Surely, if that happened to me, I would remember.
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No one would ever forget that!”
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There’s a line between the half-spheres
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promise of the plutonium within
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festering for decades a 20,000 year half-promise of venom
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for the waters of my soul.
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A quick twist of the shovel to pop it open
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release a brilliant flash of blue
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burning until only my shadow remains
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and in no shape to write a best-seller
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defeating the entire purpose of this expedition.
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I leave the demon core be the
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sleeping dragon’s tail untickled;
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I can write about them instead
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perhaps one with a treasure
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that can end the world
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locked away for a rainy day.
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This was “Memory” by Æ et al.,
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read for you by Yuugenshou,
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wolf of wanderlust.
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Thank you for listening
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to The Voice of Dog.
