THE POEM IN WHICH I ACCOUNT FOR WASTED TIME
Nicholas Molbert
To say the universe is this
or that is blasé. Right now,
the universe is what’s right in front of me—
a donut. Tomorrow,
a festival sans shirts and fathers,
or eggs reminding me
of their expiration.
I suffer from the curious disease
of The-Longer-You-Are-Here-
the-Less-There-Is-To-Say,
i.e., the –itis of living, and the Internet
cello chomps away at the room
I’ve reserved for silences.
I once was a boy
whose best invention was walking
and admiring hydrants at the same time.
Sometimes I send him letters,
tell him this year began
when I was gifted a toy
dinosaur and a sloppy kiss.
I tell him it ended when the breeze
whispered to everyone, Take
a selfie, or while a girl on hands
and knees salvaged a lemonade slushie
spilled on shimmering concrete.
Author’s Commentary: I wrote this poem while sitting on a curb at Pygmalion, Champaign-Urbana's music, literature, and culture festival. I'd been scratching the bottom of the inspiration barrel for a few weeks, so I decided to write a poem that flew in the face of the recent, (admittedly) heavy-handed attempts at "poetry," to not think so much about having a poem that banged the gong of meaning so adamantly, but still delighted and surprised at its turns.
Nicholas Molbert is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has work published in or forthcoming from Fjords Review, Missouri Review, Foothill, Spillway, American Literary Review, and Ninth Letter among others.
