Los doce. Vamos a la cintura del dia. — Vallejo

Say I can’t tell you yet.
Say it’s a simple matter
Of tenses concatenating,

Then letting go
And scattering themselves
Like solitude, and rain, and roads.

Or say it’s not so
Simple: a car accident
On a city corner.

Really, the collision happened
Before any of us have been born,
A Wednesday, at noon, late June blue

Filling the sky,
None of us yet in a place
We’ve never been able to leave,

None of us offering anything
Distinct about childhood,
None of us much caring until much later.

Say the police set up a makeshift triage,
A cop with his hand
On a woman’s shoulder.

Say someone gives
Her some coffee, and she holds it
Loosely, an indifference

Mixed with dependence
In her posture, as if she
Needs something less

Than she knows. Childhood
Will do that, sometimes seconds
Before your sedan slams a van

Full of next year’s phonebooks
And sends the driver through
The windshield and into a body

Cast for two months.
Truth is, it happened years
Ago or it hasn’t happened yet.

But I have stand here listening
To those Bible-thin pages
Turning in a summer breeze.

It feels…nice.
Then another collision will happen:
The woman with the coffee,

I will hear her again.
She’ll slap the cop’s back,
Will keep slapping and keep

Saying who who who,
And she won’t ever stop.
The lid on her cup will snap off.

She’ll look as if she’s dancing.
She’ll look up at the sky,
And will feel that burn called loss,

And we’ll watch it spill down her
Arm and skirt, like a memory
That exiles each of us

From this afternoon
And scatters us onto a page
As blank as childhood’s,

Slow and short as it is.

Interview with Alexander Long in KGB Lit Magazine.