30 May 2007 | Vol. 7, No. 1
Act Six
Success is never final.
– fortune cookie
On days you simply want
for something to go right
or well, there's no view arresting
enough to shake you
by the shoulders or hold
your hands until you wake.
The town goes on meanwhile,
its hundred thousand
languages opening like
flowers on another continent.
Only the sky's unbroken,
a joke on your former life
when you almost felt
chosen, when coastal storms
from November to March
made your one reminder
that everyone is mortal and failure
of flesh is only the body
opening to a single sky.
If ever you had idols, those
candles were their skins;
whatever lessons you carried
here went unpacked.
Suddenly your life went to hell
and you weren't driving
at the time—yet you're responsible
as no one else for every mile
and even where you wait
for another human evening
full with untethered light.
About the author:
John Wylam's poems have been printed in the Mankato Poetry Review, Illya's Honey, Poet Lore, Pacific Review, and Cimarron Review among others, in addition to several anthologies. He received a 1998 AWP Intro Journals award, was nominated for a Pushcart in 2000, and was awarded an Individual Excellence grant from the Ohio Arts Council in 2006. Pudding House published his chapbook titled Darke County Poems in 2005. He has an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University, where he taught American Culture Studies and English until May 2006. He currently lives in Toronto, ON.
For further reading:
Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 7, No. 1, where "Act Six" ran on May 30, 2007. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
