Poems

Elegy in Which The War Is Not Much With Us

By @thetoysofpeace ·

I don’t think much
about the war,
been so busy, you know,
reading and writing,
tasting all these new
kinds of beer.
After the cancer
took my mother
I pulled her bathrobe
off the linen closet door.
Nothing left
to fight for in there,
so I forgot
a little more.
Something outside me
had shifted
all the measures.
My head felt dense
but also lighter.
I turned the highway over.
I lost count of the war.
Came to in the midnight ER
tasting sweaty pillow,
shitting charcoal
and lying badly
to the burnt-out doctors.
No, it doesn’t hurt.
I’ve never even heard
about the war.

Joshua Daniel Edwin’s poetry appears in a variety of publications in print and online. His translations of Dagmara Kraus' poetry were awarded a 2012 PEN Translation Fund Grant and an ALTA Travel Fellowship and will appear in a chapbook published by Argos Books. He is a member of the editorial board for the magazine Circumference: Poetry in Translation and lives in Brooklyn.

You Might Also Like