ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

For the last few years
I've been the recipient
of a maelstrom of boxes
arriving at my doorstep

like emotional time-bombs.
They are mine, in a way,
and they're not, being
stuff of a life lived

a life-time ago, or two;
borne from a period
in my twenties when I moved
to better myself, stepped back

to advance, as Frost put it.
The years of leaving behind
are coming back to me in
these boxes, dusty from being

in an old friend's basement.
I open them expectantly
and with a dreading numb—
it's sometimes just too much

to come upon periodically
old love letters, bills, books,
poems, collages, cancelled checks,
working drafts and run-out pens.

One box held old records
I cadged from my college
radio station. Albert Collins.
Mudabaruka. Sticky Fingers.

Another had micro cassettes
I talked into those long days
of L.A. driving: my voice
rambling, full of empty ideas.

Another all old notebooks
rife with haiku
and transcribed dreams.
one little gold mine:

an octave of bounced checks
written to an old girlfriend,
a nasty letter from Sallie
Mae, and my very first

acceptance letter for a poem
I can recite to this day:
"I walk down the path
and just go until…"

Is she consciously
trying to torture me
or is she just slow
at cleaning out her garage?

I can't get myself to ask;
I just wait for the next.
Got another one today,
a package this time—

which gives me hope
that the well is nearly dry.
Just two books: Woolf's
The Moment & Religious

Experience, hardcover.
No note, just an inch of shelf
space from a past life,
The mailman even came back

to hand deliver this one,
having just left an especially
dreary lump of dead mail.
I'm not sure what I'll do

when the boxes stop
coming (or when the next
one arrives). There will
be so much more to

forget. I'll just keep stock-
piling my life, not looking
back, and see what keeps
coming back down the line.