en route
Jerry Sloan
__________
After an art installation by Heather Ryan Kelley
__________
you drink water to take pills (favorite mug, borrowed
seven years ago from a communal kitchen, shows the
cover of Dubliners by James Joyce) and walk to the
gallery, past storefront signs for the suicide hotline
(“call/text 988” “You Matter” “There is Hope”) and you
are old enough to remember the world before text was a
verb (when there was just mother’s bookshelf, just
Joyce)(when a book is medicine, when one hundred
years disappear); pre-Joyce: never knew where you
came from, never understood faith, never knew what
you wanted to be; with Joyce: “yes I said yes I will Yes”
(the right text comforts, convinces, communes)(you
matter, there is hope, keep walking)
__________
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Posted in When in Rome: Nov '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry