2018 Anselle M. Larson/Academy of American Poets Prize

 

Coerced into our roles, the gift of sight makes us bystanders of suffering.

                  We hold as self evident

that someone still remembers the kid killed on the curb while waiting for his bus,

                  that his next of kin was the

one who stapled stuffed animals to the closest light post. But we don’t really know

                  who made the memoriam.

Is this a valid requiem? This light post, working a double shift as a sticky note for the

                  memory of a dead kid,

doing its job so well that drivers-by find themselves complicit in fabricating the

                  boy’s continued existence.

It’s good to be complicit. To make up memories that make it all real, because

                  dying needs an audience

to make itself bad. If bodies didn’t go so bad after dying then everybody

                  would have themselves stapled up

to the light posts and to the street signs. Then we wouldn’t have to hide in shame,

                  in the ground, out of sight.

Then we could still covet that being-looked-at which assures us that we took up space

                  in the world. To rest easy

in the comfort of knowing that someone thinks of us without our having to remind them.

                  He’ll stay around after he’s

done being someone’s son or someone’s seat buddy on the way to school, as long as the

                  bears remain at their post.