Apr 28, 2021
Parting Song
BY JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM
First
it is one day without you.
Then two.
And soon,
our point: moot.
And our solution, diluted.
And our class action (if ever was)
is no longer suited.
Wherewith I give to looting through
the war chest of our past
like a wily Anne Bonny
who snatches at plunder or graft.
But the wreck of that ransack,
that strongbox, our splintering coffer,
the claptrap bastard
of the best we had to offer,
is sog-soaked and clammy,
empty but for sand.
Like the knuckle-white cup
of my urgent, ghastly hands
in which nothing but
the ghost of love is held.
Damn it to hell.
