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Poetry by Mark Jackley

SELF STORAGE

SEEN FROM A SUBWAY TRAIN, DECEMBER, FIVE P.M.

LOCKS

RUSH HOUR

SELF STORAGE

It's all here, the lamp
that shone upon the books
I hid in from my ex,
the couch where I often slept,
the paperwork undoing us,
even the contract on this dark

space I keep under lock and key.

-------------------------------------------------------------

SEEN FROM A SUBWAY TRAIN, DECEMBER, FIVE P.M.

An old white house, iceberg-still.
Polar light from a TV spills
into the yard, deepens
the silence of a rake.

The other deeply
silent riders and I are
hardly a tribe. No,
we seem to be on floes
cracked apart and set adrift
in the long night
by our own hands.

-------------------------------------------------------------

LOCKS

All those times
I changed the locks
after we fought like vipers.
All those hundreds of dollars
spent to keep you out.
All those glittering keys,
their little teeth bared.
Yet I address you still,
proof there is no door.

-------------------------------------------------------------

RUSH HOUR

A stream of cars and trucks
in liquid
dusk turn
a Siberian blue

enter
everything else,
lift into
the river somewhere.

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