Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: The Girl Who Threw Butterflies
Next story: Lit City: literary events listing

Poetry: The Silences

The Silences

Women in Black on Elmwood Avenue and Bidwell

I see

The tips of green grass

When the lazy moon

Yawns.

This waiting between silences

Is not peace.

But in your

Solemn quiet,

You are firm in your fear

Of hollowed-out ground,

Where bodies are clumped

Together like rubber dolls,

When earth-questions seem

Out of place:

“Did you see my keys?”

“Where’s my wallet?”

“Where were you last night?”

“Why did you leave me?”

And then I wonder

What fills the air

At that moment

Right before the hanging,

Or the content of the unstirred silence

After the needle is injected,

The lethal space between

I am here and

I am no more.

Does wondering replace

Their lives

Or our stale, exhaled breaths?

john t. marohn

John T. Marohn is a freelance writer and author of Tiorunda Stories, a novel set in a suburb of Buffalo in the 1950s.



How to get your poetry in Artvoice

Literary Buffalo occasionally features poetry by local writers. The poetry editor is Florine Melnyk. Submissions of no more than five poems and no more than 10 pages in length can be sent by e-mail to florine@starcherone.com or by mail to Florine Melnyk, Poetry Editor, Artvoice, 810 Main St., Buffalo, NY 14202 Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope to have manuscripts returned.