Our Many Never Endings by Courtney Queeney

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 24, 2014   Our Many Never Endings   Courtney Queeney

You entered the bedroom and fell to your knees. I wait the rest of my life to hear you say, I made a mistake. Inside my chest, a mangle. Inside yours, a deflating balloon. You took the vacuum cleaner, the ironing board, the dish rack and left me some lint, an iron to scorch shirts, one chipped plate. I would like to say at least we perfected entrances and exits, like professional stage actors honing their craft, but even that’s a fantasy. Mostly on TV the lions ate the hyenas but sometimes the hyenas formed a posse, and tore a lion up. Occasionally you came in out of the rain and I was glad to have you.              Copyright @ 2014 by Courtney Queeney. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “The title was born from a typo—I fumbled the phrase ‘never-ending’ in another poem. I was going through a Groundhog Day-esque breakup at the time I wrote this, and wanted to capture the bittersweet state of dividing my life from another’s. On the one hand, sorting and packing our overlapping possessions was an enormous and joyless chore; on the other, I dreaded the day it would end.” —Courtney Queeney   Courtney Queeney is the author of Filibuster to Delay a Kiss (Random House, 2007). She lives in Chicago. Most Recent Book by Queeney   Filibuster to Delay a Kiss (Random House, 2007) “Pleasure” by Katie Peterson “Man and Wife” by Robert Lowell “Sita” by Jason Schneiderman Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. 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.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038