A World Is a World Is a World & Guernica, and then some
Sam Rasnake
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A World Is a World Is a World
– after Cobb’s Barns and Distant Houses (1931),
painting by Edward Hopper
I remember the world Hopper painted
My Saturdays, toys in the closet beside
the cedar chest. Plaster walls and old
wooden floor, a familiar touch. Curtains
covered with horses – I’d close my eyes
and ride. Reading, baseball, bicycle.
Classic monsters from Universal lived
on tv. This was my world. And summer,
Mother calling my name at dusk, supper
on the counter. We had no table. Later,
a radio under my pillow – music filling
my head with dream. The field and trees
and creek by the railroad tracks. A distant
whistle well after midnight – then sleep.
*
It’s been raining since 5. We do need it.
The leaves are gone. The ground, thirsty
for winter, and the birds, a constant frenzy.
Mother and Dad entombed a decade now.
My sister is still living – her fractured days
are mending. War thunders across all sides
of the world. Here, the streets always threaten.
Banning books is the new politics of shame.
Reading doesn’t grease the state. For now,
my coffee cup is empty. My children are safe,
or so I tell myself, and the young girl dances.
There is someone I love – the beauty in it. Like
Hopper, my barns wait to be filled, my bones,
from another time, inch their way to silence…
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Guernica, and then some
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night,
and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
– Sun Tzu
– for the child admiring Picasso’s
Guernica, Reina Sofia Museum, (c. 1990s)
All those rumors of wars
and their darker arts –
of blood and bodies ghosting
the streets, of scorched
holes in the desert –
can’t stuff yesterday
back into its box
on a shelf –
in the closet – while we
sleep – the song of
safe beds and codes,
all our dreams –
waiting for the
mercies of dawn
Sam Rasnake is the author of Fallen Leaves (Rare Swan Press, forthcoming), Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press) and Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit). His works, nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, have appeared in Wigleaf, FRiGG, Spillway, Drunken Boat, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, and Bending Genres Anthology. Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social or Twitter @SamRasnake
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