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| Detail of “Abraham” (1502) by Filippino Lippi at the Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence |
I might beseech Ishmael, by my old body’s language,
to take the cushioned seat by the window, the one
where I think he’d be the most comfortable. But the sun
in his eyes at that angle? I don’t know. And the carnage
in midday glare—how could that view leave him sanguine
to talk with Isaac at all? I could draw the shade,
or suggest the carpeted floor, like where they once played
under both mothers’ gaze. Oh, how could they hang on
to those days like I do? Isaac will call for a chair
too far from his brother, not in the same light. So I’ll offer
dark tea, sage water, or something stronger,
to soften the crystalline disdain in the air.
This could be the day they discover, neither is tougher
and neither can have his way. Or must we go longer?
Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. Two of his poetry collections, The Nameless (Finishing Line Press) and Watching the Perseids (winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), are being released in 2014. He won the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award offered by Southern Indiana Review, and received the 2013 Literal Latte Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Fugue, Atlanta Review, Crab Creek Review, Sanskrit, South 85, The Tusculum Review.