Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      August 2, 2017Have Coffin, Need PallbearersJames Gering

      I’m celebrating my 48th. No birthday paraphernalia
      in the house, so I’ll blow out a mourner’s candle
      stuck in a muffin. My son usually calls,
       
      but last time I said no need. That boy is too bloody literal.
      Should I email myself? Happy returns, you old sod.
      Maybe a selfie with the muffin raised high?
       
      No—I will send out notes in bottles.
      Hello, son, remember me? A birthday tree
      has just fallen in my forest.
       
      A rogue note: Have coffin, need pallbearers.
      So why am I hanging around? How absurd, this train
      of thought that will, if let, gather all the pace it needs.
       
      The window breeze calms me and a voice
      floats up from the playground, a mother singing
      happy birthday to her daughter.
       
      I want to pluck one of the birthday wishes
      out of the air, but the mother stops singing
      and looks up. I realise I’ve been singing along.
       
      In a feat that startles me, I say, “Hi there,
      birthday girl, would you and your mum
      like to come over for birthday cake?”

      from #56 - Summer 2017

      James Gering

      “Depression takes various forms in my poetry. I used to think writing came first, now I believe health is paramount—of body, mind, and emotion. When writers approach optimal health, they have a stable base for sustainable writing. The character in my poem reaches out to people, despite himself. He houses the wisdom, in a remote embryonic chamber, that ongoing solitude and its array of pitfalls are detrimental to his cause. When I am writing sustainably, my poems gradually take on life. Some of them have been gestating for over five years. I regularly visit the notebooks and files housing them and meander through, waiting for insight, waiting for a sublime line or metaphor to elevate the poem such that it gains weight, warmth, and shape while shedding all remnants of melodrama and sentimentality.”

      →