The Commendation

We had no choice but to live
in a time of abrupt flowers.
Oppenheimer drove a serpentine sports car.
Marilyn Monroe vaporized.
Our breath destroyed the old masters.
Some of us wore opaque glasses to hide
from the press but we’d read about ourselves
the next day. Terrible things: heists
gone bloody wrong; charitable funds
missing; lip-syncing; blabby, offended
masseuses. So we’d make a statement:
our fathers were mean, we could never
determine both location and momentum,
sometimes we were so frightened we turned into chalk.
Then we stopped eating unsustainable fish,
took a six-week crash-course in standing up straight
which involved mostly writhing on the floor.
If we skipped comprehension, the lessons
sped by. We wrote a novel about a bunny
in a spaceship, it felt like healing
then a letter came saying we never stopped
believing in you and it makes us feel
like a mythical beast, an angel or
one with the body of a lion and a head
like a windowbox of chervil and dill
or one of those rain forest clouds
spiders and worms live in.

Tweet
Copyright © 2011 Dean Young All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission