by Andrew Najberg
How to Carry On
Hard to avoid poisons
in soil and shelved
in sealed boxes.
They say the earth,
the water,
sooner or later the stars.
Even blowing kisses adds carbon.
We can’t wear our own skin
without worry, shouldn’t be allowed
to allow ourselves
genuine human affection.
At the park, I walk my daughter under kite
strings and past drone pilots.
A grandfather with charcoal bricks
at his heel presses burgers
against a grill.
My girl kneels in the grass
and bites the head off a dandelion.
Look daddy, I’m a horse,
she sputters, already in search
of another. I rest my hand
on her shoulder,
pull her nose from clover.
Of course you are.
We talk about things that only matter
in that we’re talking, run
around each other on the incline
until the sun falls low over the trees.
It grows cool
as parents pack their kids into car seats.
The swings ease still on their chains.
The metal slides,
crickets land on their rails.
Is it nighttime?
And I want to say not yet,
that the dark isn’t total,
but light dims behind mountains
and no moon has risen
to lead the way.
Andrew Najberg is the author of the collection of poems The Goats Have Taken Over the Barracks (Finishing Line Press, 2021) and the chapbook of poems Easy to Lose (Finishing Line Press 2007). His individual poems have appeared in North American Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Nashville Review, Louisville Review, Bat City Review, Yemassee, Artful Dodge, Istanbul Review, and many other journals and anthologies both online and in print. His short fiction has appeared in Fleas on the Dog, The Wondrous Real, Psychopomp Magazine, and Bookends Review.