Current Issue: Fall/Winter 2010

Admit One  
Ron Mohring

with a line from William Olsen.

We saw the sun go down without a prayer.
We said we’d write. We said
it didn’t matter, but it did. We saw
concrete and steel cascading down;
we thought it was a movie. We knew
it couldn’t be. We couldn’t see the sun.
We couldn’t move. We moved away;
it didn’t help to swim in smaller ponds.
We moved again. We gave away
some things we loved. Others we sold.
Consoled ourselves with thoughts
of death. We weren’t there yet.
We weren’t the trusting type. We won’t
be fooled again. We know which side
of our bread is buttered, how to shake
a hand and read a darting eye. We know
the tricks that pose as true. We’d rather
draw nude lovers on the ceilings
of our skulls with candle soot
than once admit our own impediments.
How so. How sure. Oh woeful, baleful we.

Ron Mohring’s poetry collection, Survivable World, won the 2003 Washington Prize. He lives in central Pennsylvania, where he manages Seven Kitchens Press.