April 2015
A native of Johnstown, NY, I've lived in Ripon, WI for the past 28 years, where I teach literature and writing at Ripon College. I've published six collections of poetry, including Stutter Monkand Second Wind; I also co-edited (with Kate Sontag) the essay anthology After Confession: Poetry as Confession. Essays, reviews, and individual poems have appeared widely, both in print and online. In recent years I've spent nearly as much time on photography as poetry. A gallery of my work is online here: http://instagram.com/doctorjazz
|
Foggy Night Downtown
The black gleam of wet asphalt, each streetlight haloed, each dark storefront an unkept, unkeepable promise in my recurring dream--I am walking and walking as if back or forward through my own years, and no shop is open, no one else out this chilly and blurred night, and all the addresses above each door waver and fade to gray. It's so late even the bars are closed. The only music my own footsteps, and their mist-muffled echoes against downtown stone. I cannot remember this corner or whether I've been here before. Can't tell which street leads home, which is why I walk and walk, trying to look as if I know where I am going, even though I never see a single face in any of these windows peering back at me, not even my own. |
©2015 David Graham