person Andrew Kozma, one poem

Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, Cave Wall, Subtropics, and Best American Poetry 2015. His book of poems, City of Regret (2007), won the Zone 3 First Book Award.

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Song of the Coming to Terms With It

First, the bargaining. Then the begging. And, at last, the realization
there’s no one in the room but you.

There are no terms to be had. No concessions to be won. Waiting for death
isn’t as lonely as death, but only just.

In Wales there is a pot they put the dead in. The dead boil and twist
their limbs into life, but are still dead.

And then there’s that philosophical fear that you’re the only real one here,
everyone else an automaton. Dead.

When every tree laces the ground with the dead. When the tall grass frays
and refuses to die. When storms don’t rain.

There is no it. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fight. Just the possibility of absence
and, eventually, its absence.

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