Tipton Poetry Journal – Summer 2020 You see others, runners, or people like you, dazed and wandering. You have eaten buffalo meat and wild petals. You have cried into the lake, watched fish and waterfowl. You are here to escape the hospital where you’re asked if you want to hold your child for the first time, if you want him off the machines. He’s not dead yet. He will be soon. The notion seems barbaric, but the disorganized mind wants to hold the child. There’s a lovely blindness to life. With death you open a door and the knob falls off in your hand; you climb a stair and find the last step missing. You fall and fall. But here, when you walk, there is always more to see. It’s a lotus-eating park, you think. One day, you’ll tumble out and find you’ve aged a thousand years.
Kelly Whiddon lives in Georgia and has published in Crab Orchard Review, Southeast Review, Poetry International, Southern Poetry Review, and Meridian, among others. Her book, The House Began to Pitch (Mercer UP), was honored with the Adrienne Bond Poetry Award, and she has served as associate editor of Apalachee Review and is on the staff of International Quarterly. You can find more info at www.kellywhiddon.com.
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