John Palen
Strange & Wonderful Creatures
by John Palen
ISBN: 987-1-962405-13-1 — $14.00 ($4.00 US Shipping)
John Palen’s chapbook, Riding With the Diaspora, was the winner of the 2021 Sheila-Na-Gig Editions Chapbook Contest. John’s new chapbook, Strange and Wonderful Creatures, is now available from Sheila-Na-Gig. He lives, writes, and raises vegetables on the Illinois Grand Prairie.
Lately the Memories Have Softened
I’d wake to find you
gone again, not even bothering
to stuff pillows under blankets
as a ruse or close
the window to the cold.
You were compact, agile,
and I imagine you dropping
cat-like from the bay window roof.
You’d land on your feet
and vanish. I would pull
clothes on over pajamas,
try not to wake your mother,
drive the streets at a crawl
to search the dark
with sleep-crusted eyes.
The cashier at Sid’s
knew you well. He’d tell me
whether you’d been in that night,
give me the same sad
shake of the head he offered
every pathetic, unshaven,
worried dad out looking
for his middle school son
at 2 in the morning in rain
turning to snow.
And I would exit the aisles
of cheap wine and ramen,
the plate-glass door covered
with yard sales and lost pets
and go home, and it would still be
mostly a game you were playing,
small stuff, weed and knives,
not yet guns and prisons,
nor lives shattering around you
like so much glass.
