Alan Walowitz

Alan Walowitz, is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. From Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written trans-continentally with poet Betsy Mars. Now available—free, gratis, for download (https://redwolfjournal.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/the-poems-of-the-air-by-alan-walowitz-2/) —is the collection The Poems of the Air from Red Wolf Editions.

The Boneyard

As we always insist, not us.
No matter. The ache in our bones
adheres to our will, weighs us down
all the same and renders us mute.
At night the bleat of breaking and loss
makes us think
we might have done more, offered some help,
written more letters to the dead
though we too will wind up unfindable.

So, we bargain, oh-god-of-the-other-side:
please let us make it another morning.
The landscape of skulls form stepping stones
could help us out of bed.
The ribcages stand in line like soldiers
never enough alert and never quite at ease,
The long bones promise to be oars
should there come a time
we might escape by water.

I keep the voices of the dead
on my phone with the secrets
they must, by now, be ready to share.
They ask, Why haven’t you called?
Or, why not drop by?
But I know they mean the only way
is find some resolve and stick with us here,
which in our haphazard, human way,
might be our only substitute for love.