I Received a Bitter Email from a Good-Hearted Man

John Wall Barger

So twenty years of friendship
ended in a small gesture
like a door sliding shut,
and I carried my feeling
to the roof, with its clear view
of Gamru, villagers strolling by,
men with their cigarettes,
women with bags of dirt
on their heads, a few thin dogs.
It was a sick, empty feeling,
like a film of ash on the skin.
And general, too, the feeling
—in the air, in the spectral smoke.
Not for me alone. I circled
the roof, but slowly, slowly,
like Issa’s snail. I spoke aloud
to the green parrots in a near tree
about my friend. I told them
how he let me sleep on his couch
so many nights, and read me
his poems until the wee hours,
poems that made me feel
like part of a tribe. I told them
I hoped he’d be all right,
more than all right, without my help,
which he’s always had till now.
A butterfly cut a jagged line
in the air and I said to the parrots
that for me this is enough,
all of this. And as I spoke it
I believed it. I inhaled, in a deep breath,
the farm and wide roof and the sky
and almost threw up, the melancholy
so sharp. How blessed I was,
it didn’t seem real, like a gardener
who keeps finding seeds
in the creases of his clothes,
and pressed against his skin.
As if I knew, more than any god,
how to live. Suddenly the parrots
darted to the opposite hill,
making a green ladder in the air,
leaving behind a sweet afterimage
which I shut my eyes
to see a moment longer.

Genre: 
Author Bio: 

John Wall Barger is the author of four books of poetry, including The Mean Game (Palimpsest, 2019). His poems and critical writing have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review (online), Cincinnati Review, Hopkins Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. He lives in West Philadelphia and teaches Creative Writing at the University of the Arts.

Issue: 
62