November 2018
Poetry is a lonely business, but I have a friend who plays guitar, and when I play bass with him, I find community. My most recent book is In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013 and I've had recent poems in Hummingbird, Atticus Review, Hamilton Stone Review, and other literary magazines. I'm honored to serve as managing editor of the Lorine Niedecker Monograph Series, What Region? I blog as The Middlewesterner (www.middlewesterner.com), and have put up at least five little poems a week since mid-2008.
HAVING MUSIC
~for Doug, who plays it with me~
It is that
the beat is
there, even
as the air
waits for it.
Trust we land
on it, a
single note
between us.
They listen.
Even as
they hold their
breaths waiting
here it comes
again. It
enfolds them,
and us, and
won't let go,
that moment
when music's
the only
thing we need.
SOMETIMES
Sometimes
what we write
is not what
we want to.
Sometimes
it's just the best
we can do,
given the
difficulty
of saying
anything
at all.
OLD MAN SINGING IN THE SAHARA
I go out
so far into
the desert
the air
dust the sin
we are born with
sand
sand and gravel
the baked light
the hot wind, oh
and the jinn,
calling.
© 2018 Tom Montag
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