The sky tries to lure me underground, but the ground needs to open for me to fall for it. A precedent, maybe, but there isn’t precedent. Or maybe an apple needs to fall now that fall is a word I’ve used. Time needs to pass, that’s for sure. And I need to age. I need to love and fall in love like an apple shot out of a seed. Just in case, I have a convenient packet, and a can held up to my ear. Words whisper themselves without the string. And when I whisper back
it’s a lie pulling breath behind it. But there aren’t enough lies to go around, enough wind to whip them back to my eyes, which do not believe even when I see, which isn’t often.
74 The Paris-American
ChristopherKondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, a New Measure Poetry Prize finalist, which was recently published in the Free Verse Editions poetry series by Parlor Press. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Cimarron Review, Free Verse, Meridian, Seneca Review, Verse Daily and Washington Square. He holds degrees from Fordham University, Columbia University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver where he is an editor for Denver Quarterly.
Next week's poet:
Roger Reeves Winner of the 2013 The Paris-American Reading Series Contest
