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Owl Vision 2018: Millennial memories

by Matthew G. Morley –

Millennial memories

 

Archives

There, everything was retained. Notable people,

professors and activists left their lives behind.

Each day, I held yellow letters never meant for me

to read – sometimes the edges of their pages frayed away

under the force of time. When the spine of a centuries-

old book broke, it whimpered, I’m scared.

And so I cradled the text, knowing the impermanence

of preservation, but offered reassurance. Sometimes

I whispered back: me too.

 

                                       What will happen next

century? Or the century after that? These objects

may live to be held by a hundred pairs of hands,

yet their existence is simply an echo

among the stacks and stacks and stacks

of others like them. We are all scared.

 

Millennial Adulthood

I wake up somewhere in downtown Chicago – or,

that’s how it smells. A pencil’s in my hand, in the

other’s a notebook full of fragments of poems. No, I’m

full of fragments of poems; its are pages of nonstop

nonsense. I’m wearing grungy, ratty clothes. No shoes.

 

I dream of a mystical bed whereupon, after a rest, I

could return to childhood – or childishness, whichever

is easiest – but instead I wander into an office, take a

seat at an empty cubicle. Twiddle my thumbs. A year

later, I stand up and step away.

 

Silence introduces me to another version of myself,

who asks “this is it?” in rare hiatuses, like those that

exist between bars on a bass clef staff, or between the

stanzas of this poem; between an inhale and the buzz.

Between pressing a screen and the arrival of a car.

Between saying goodbye and actually departing.

 

Working at the tree farm between jobs – again

There’s no time to wait for a dream

job – or at least one with better pay.

Mr. H’s farm is about a mile from the town

high school – my college sweetheart’s

alma mater. Living here 11 months

has felt like 11 years, but I still don’t call

myself a New Yorker. (No, not the city). The first

time I was between jobs, I learned the tractor,

took a selfie as proof for my Illinois friends.

Sunburnt my skin, nicked my arms on dead,

browning brush, which I drunkenly bonfired

with my sweetheart and Mr. H’s daughter.

 

This time, I learned how to jiggle the ignition key,

where to kick the engine of the 360 mower

so that it would turn over. To arrive before

the rise of the Sun. To ask less

from the dearest oracle black cat

of returning home to Chicago.

To answer just once and avoid my friends’

follow-up question: Can you—

Posted on January 12, 2018 by owllightnews.com. This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.
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