a poem by woody loverude

Have You Seen This Man? This Blue Box?


Of us all, the mannequins look healthiest rioting down Bowery
in their three piece suits and pocketed dresses,
the occasional hollow limb flexing the grid.

We'll never be doctors, are no longer students,
& when asked about our apartments, mutter
It's bigger on the inside.

There are cracks in the sidewalk. Cracks in the walls.
For a moment, silence barrels down the avenues
and our friends and neighbors are forgotten. Never were.

The world is stranger than we expected.

We had so little time with our mothers (gone, gone)
who supplied us with food mill and money clip
until our hairless selves grew rich & fat & loved.

We can’ t remember the books they read us as we slept.
There was something about a god & something about an angry boy
& something about a machine & something about a lightning storm.

It made sense, then. Our mothers said they named a month
after us, but we would only know which when we grew up & married.
Now we’ re adults & it’ s November. Our mothers are far away.

Now we open the refrigerator to applesauce & chutney.
We remember there’ s a war or two.
On the ceiling, we hear the ghosts of our fathers’ footfalls.
We turn the music louder.



Woody Loverude's favorite Doctor is David Tennant & his favorite companion, Donna.