Nothing Puckers into Nothing
Michael Meyerhofer

Let’s say you’re just starting out
and your teacher already says
you have to read this poem
by a dead guy who probably isn’t me.
And you’re not sure what to do
about these strange vowels,
how to steer your tongue
through a jungle-maze of consonants
and then, line after line
that doesn’t even seem special,
just stuff about flowers
and their waving shadows
then a bit about politics
and a woman on a cold beach
untangling her wet hair.
It’s strange, isn’t it, that we’re all
going to die. Probably
I never really bought it,
wasted my time trying to impress
the clouds enough to stop
shrugging from sails into swords.
I wish I could talk to you
about burning cop cars
and the absurdity of bullets,
then those schools of herrings
looping through rusty shipwrecks,
but have you ever flattened out
a wrinkle in a tablecloth?
Forget I told you good news.
Listen, the emptiness
in an empty glass
became the tongue in your skull
with eighty years to dance.

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