After Reading the Narrative Is Dead - Threepenny Review

After Reading the Narrative Is Dead

On one of those unmarked back roads,

I stopped for a fat yellow turtle of a bus,

and one student got out. A boy in overalls,

who crossed in front and began walking down

to a rusted bridge, empty bottom land.

I know he doesn’t mean anything, and no signs

exist in this world, but he held a blank square

of poster-board pinned under one arm,

wind twisting the edges, showing the underside

—a surface mostly blue, as if he carried

a piece of sky into a brown field.

Now it’s late, the boy slipping in and out

of mind—sometimes he throws his picture away,

his teacher a pussy, no time for freak shows.

Sometimes his overalls couldn’t be more clichéd;

farm chores an obstacle he’ll ditch one day

for good, driving down the same dirt road,

in the trunk, this painting, dozens more.

At that hour and in every other,

thanks to relativity pervading space,

perspective, every degree of form or color,

any conclusions at which we might arrive—

multiple endings keep occurring to him;

now he’s taping his work beside the bed

where it recedes from sight as he falls asleep,

a window left opening on the wall.

- Published in The Threepenny Review Issue 151 Fall 2017