Self-Allowance

by Jack Hanson

For Helen

Each installment in the sequence
is soaked, but bears the stain of some
dried-out forgetting. Re-inscription
requires, at times, a reversal,
so some rivers become canyons,
some buildings crumble and collapse.

I can’t believe how compelled
I am by the softness of your
light, how it bathes the walls
like a sun that sets all night
and rises back up without
ever touching down. Suspended,

you might say, is a strange word,
with a dark past— true enough,
in some worlds. But here it seems
to describe something no other
word would. Like the way darkness
is overcome by realizing you were never there.

 

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About the Author:

Jack Hanson is a graduate student at Yale University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the PN Review, The New Criterion, The Scofield, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook, Monica Moody and Other Poems (Pen and Anvil, 2017).

Cover image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr (cc).