ISSN 1543-6063

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John Sweet

here in the year of
missing and murdered gods
you are twenty-three
and have two children
by two different women
and you are leaving new york
you say

are moving
to north carolina to be with
the waitress you love
and i am in my
two-room apartment looking for
the first
warm day of spring

i am searching for the poem
inside the shadow
of a bird
there and then gone across
the window i sit next to

and the phone doesn't ring
and no doors are opened and
i am still half a million words
away from meeting the
woman i will marry

she is still unscarred by
the idea
of her own mortality

we are both staring into
the same sun
waiting for a
promise that can't be broken

letter, 
possibly to my unborn child

boy on a bike beneath
a vast twilight sky

six dead
somewhere to the south
and then seven

all of the poisoned rolling hills
between here and there

all of the days left
to live

magic should
never be too much to
ask for

John Sweet is 34, a father, husband, and self-described mild-mannered civil servant by day, righter of minor wrongs by night.  He has been writing for 20 years, publishing in the small press for 14.  Recent credits include the chapbooks mapping the room of murdered children (2002, Black Hoody Nation) and approaching lost (2002, Via Dolorosa Press), and his first full-length collection, human cathedrals (2002, Ravenna Press).  He is the featured writer at the Burning Word board, where he has about 50 pieces posted.

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