When a man with no memory goes out looking for a woman.
When he throws his boots in the fire the night he leaves.
When he walks the wood to the wood where she was born.
When the wood’s as empty as his head was when he left it.
When it’s winter and the burdocks catch in his beard.
When the snow falls from the sky but the sky isn’t there.
When the snow touches the wood and the wood disappears.
When he calls their names but his footprints won’t follow.
When he eats a handful of snow and feels like a
kid again.
When he asks himself what year was it when I forgot.
When I forgot I wasn’t a man and started to tell myself.
When I started to tell myself the story I’m telling myself.
When the girl in the story her footprints won’t follow.
When her name’s as empty as the wood I was born in.
When her hair fell like snow when snow falls into a fire.
When a man with no memory goes out looking for a woman.
40 The Paris-American
Danniel Schoonebeek was born in the Catskills. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Boston Review, Fence, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, La Petite Zine, The Awl, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. He writes a monthly column on poetry for The American Reader, hosts the Hatchet Job reading series in Brooklyn, and works as associate editor at PEN America.
