All Pardons
James R. Whitley
And here,
these lovely parting gifts:
this ebullient amethyst sky,
this fistful of fresh violets
to mask the stench of departure,
this shiny box of absolution.
We have devoured your sins
like bitter lozenges,
each of us choking down
a dozen or more so
that you might arrive
unburdened, cleansed.
And now this
sour quince plucked from
the tree of knowledge:
the word carcinoma
comes to us from
the Greek karkinos,
like an army of trouble
hiding in the belly
of a wooden horse.
Outside the funeral home,
solemn silo of
relinquished dreams,
the October wind rages
past the unflappable
togas of the caryatids,
their tireless arms
stretched skyward
as if holding up
the weighty myth
of everything that life
was supposed to be,
but isn’t, wasn’t.
James R. Whitley’s
poetry has been nominated for the
Pushcart Prize as well as for The Best of the Net and has appeared or is
forthcoming in several publications, including Barrelhouse, Controlled Burn,
Mississippi Review, Pebble Lake Review, Poetry Southeast, and Wheelhouse.
His first book, Immersion, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. His
second collection, This Is the Red Door, won the Ironweed Press Poetry
Prize and will be published soon.