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Thursday, May 9, 2013

Poem-A-Day: No Ticket by Jonathan Wells

No Ticket
by Jonathan Wells 

His clothes were filled with tickets to past events

so he could hear the orchestra tuning up again

and the airplane landing near the diving cliffs

 

in Acapulco where the boys leapt into the known

unknown in Speedo suits. All travel was continuous.

Time was ceaseless in his pockets. The piano recital

 

played forever in its aftermath, its tides of notes

surging and retreating according to a lunar mood

for which the children had no table. The matinee

 

was screened over and over in the balcony of

his thought, specifically the part where the hero

realized he'd been pursuing her and was being

 

pursued in turn as they reached the precipice

of no regret. And then the fiery night called out

to them and said no ticket would be needed.

 

Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Wells. Used with permission of the author.
About This Poem

"The evening after my son's piano recital I reached into my jacket pocket and found the program for the event and a ticket stub from a recent concert. The poem found the other iterations for me and the permission to revisit them."

--Jonathan Wells
Poetry by Wells

Train Dance (Four Way Books, 2011)

 

Poem-A-Day was launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

 

Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.
May 9, 2013

 
Jonathan Wells is the author of Train Dance (Four Way Books, 2011). He also edited Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll 
(MTV Books), an anthology of poems about rock music. Wells lives in New York City.
Related Poems
by Wallace Stevens
by Robert Frost
by C. D. Wright

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