< bosnia >
Ray Heinrich
The procession comes down this single street
in the town you always thought it was your
own but in dreams at night it is the same so
it can’t be real you tell the person lying
by your side who you thought you’d been
married to for 10 or was it 25 years this
slides like your other visions it’s possible
that there has been no one all these years
that they were all dreams even if their
names were pat and philip and susan and
michael and ginger and ginger just had to be
real in this world that possesses no more
than 16 colors and tomorrow it will be time
to stop all this time to make the only
decision allowed and it will come as fast as
the end as slow as your words wanting to
reach that ginger to tell her or was it him
or a vegetable used in the soup that
comprised your life as sacred as the cow in
that mcdonnell’s hamburger or that ant you
stepped on in 1989 while taking out the
garbage which had as much an idea of where
as you do now sitting trying to decide which
is the greater sin while sitting on the
railing of the highest bridge in your home
town not high enough like new york or tokyo
or london or moscow not high enough as
she and he comes to take your hand and
you call out mother you call out father
knowing all of you are dead and the
aliens coming across the border have taken
your house and jobs and just like bosnia you
remember the slow pleasure of holding your
hands around your neighbor’s neck or was it
the stereo and the cd’s you wanted never
enough to have them gone forever but maybe
just a little while just until you listened
to the last chords of orchestra of the slow
sun dissolving into the next day where you
promise yourself knowing it’s a lie but
hoping to fool this love you made up this
god you made up this smooth even transition
into the level plain of museums of ideas
never mentioned of the shortest day of the
year which has the longest night.
