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      August 5, 2020Alejandro EscudéBed Sheets (Moving Out After Separation)

      I wanted my soul out of the house, too.
      So, I took all my diaries—twenty or so,
      from the past twenty years. And I slipped them
      into the recycling bin. I took all my photos,
      baby, childhood, adolescence, college years,
      and trashed those, too. I took my blood pressure reader,
      and I took the white carnival mask I bought in Venice.
      I wasn’t going to leave myself at the house.
      She offered me sheets for my bed. I took them
      to the new place then dumped them in the trash bin.
      She offered me the dog’s bed, and I accepted,
      but it never even made it close to his food bowl.
      I took my bicycle, the one that folds up to fit inside a car.
      I was proud to buy it for myself. She didn’t understand
      the purchase. She looked at me, I remember this,
      as if I’d acquired a reptile who we’d now have to feed
      live mice and crickets. A bicycle so I could get in shape.
      A fucking bicycle! Do you understand what I’m driving at?
      She wanted my father to help her move out, too.
      Her brother-in-law would be there, but they needed
      my father’s truck. My father loved her like a daughter.
      In many ways, he was just as hurt as me.
      I lied and said my father couldn’t help. If she wanted
      the patio furniture then she’d have to figure out a way
      to haul it. The moon that night was a harvest moon.
      Yellow. Smudged by leftover rain clouds or wind.
      What the hell do I know about weather?

      from #68 - Summer 2020

      Alejandro Escudé

      “I didn’t realize the importance of having engaged in a lifelong relationship with poetry until I needed it to survive. It’s an instrument, a companion instrument that nobody can take away from you. It’s also a form of insulation from the wasteland of the world where you can go when you need a break or a place to quietly contemplate and study the common absurdities of human experience. Every day, we face a wasteland. Sometimes, it’s an aggressive boss, an angry driver, a public or private injustice of some sort. Other times it’s a rampant disease altering our environment for an extended period of time. Whatever the case, poetry is there like a garden, welcoming us with its eternal shade and warmth and wisdom.”