Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
In This Space
In place of the names
you might have put here
we will accept
silence, the empty
page nesting
its zeros like eggs,
an accumulation
of awful thoughts
equal to memories
that equal desires
that don’t count as memories
that were not even words
In place of the hero
you want to be here
picture
a dragon, a pool of breath
dissolving in fog
where his head meets the clouds
In place of the story
with its inevitable ending
there’s a space
for sadness
or hope or despair,
whichever is easier
Stan Sanvel Rubin is the author of four poetry collections, most recently There. Here. (Lost Horse Press, 2013) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street, 2006), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize. His work has appeared in such magazines as The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, and Shanghai Literary Review. He received the 2018 Vi Gale Award from Hubbub. With his late wife, Judith Kitchen, he co-founded and for a decade directed the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. He lives on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington and writes essay-reviews of poetry for Water-Stone Review. (updated 4/2019)