Overbrook

/ Issue 14.1 /

Now that we’d driven halfway
through the tall field that, in the dark
distance, tossed much the way
the sea does—wind, yes and with it, as
in dream or, like a dream, an idea long-
conjured: this bristling and not so sudden
stoppage of time, its passing—we forgot
what the point had been, why, in the first
place, we set out:
……………………………………….To clear the air
of something, but what? whatever
the mythic telling might be of a brotherly
grudge we, ourselves, scarcely prescribed to?
Three- and four- letter words, each a small
shadow over unlit ground, bruises
on the larger bruise… and, around us, what
refused to still itself was, I later learned, called
fescue. Remember how deafening it was,
its sway, in the moments between speaking?
So that to speak, when you did, finally,
you had almost
…………………………to yell. Like someone
calling out from shore to a swimmer
unaccounted for, who’s drifted
beyond the breakers.

D. S. Waldman

D. S. Waldman is a Marsh-Rebelo scholar at San Diego State University. His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Gettysburg Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Cherry Tree. He’s received fellowships, support and awards from Middlebury College, Kenyon Review summer workshops, San Diego State University, and Georgia Review. www.dswaldman.com

Also by D. S. Waldman (see all)

Author: D. S. Waldman

D. S. Waldman is a Marsh-Rebelo scholar at San Diego State University. His work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Gettysburg Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Cherry Tree. He’s received fellowships, support and awards from Middlebury College, Kenyon Review summer workshops, San Diego State University, and Georgia Review. www.dswaldman.com