Anti-Memory
You don’t remember how we used to love
in that cold desert of the year that King was killed,
how in that turbulence of Cronkite keeping score
each night of the dead of war
we lay there locked together, lost in separate worlds, lost lying
and lying
how beyond our bodies we knew the moon maddening march of bullets
and blood and Newark rioting to flames
how we loved even as we spoke of hell and heard RFK remind us
of pain which cannot forget falling drop by drop
You don’t remember how we used to love
in that frozen moment of turmoiled time,
how when you thrust your spearmint flavor into the cavern of my mouth
and struggled to suppress your scream
we heard your folks in the next room
smugly chatting of the Ivy League,
how for that one second you gave nothingness to being,
being and nothingness,
and we clutched in desperation, tears sprung from different pools,
how you cried to be pardoned from the prison of that antiseptic town,
and I cried when you were so absent
absent even as I touched you there
touched you, touched you knowing I really didn’t
I suck from these moments every drop, by bitter gall, by unrelenting force,
rewrite these seconds for fifty years
and though I see us standing there
hand in hand
wondering at Rilke and Thomas and Ginsberg,
as we journeyed to the center of the flesh
and though I hear you saying do not despair
and still taste your kissing me goodbye
and though I still feel our last embrace, I’m never really sure now because
I can’t remember how we used to love.
Bruce J. Berger received his MFA in Creative Writing from American University, where he worked with poets David Keplinger and Kyle Dargan. His poem “From the Maternity Ward” previously appeared in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, and other poems have been published in a variety of literary magazines. His poem “In the Last Room With My Father” won first prize in Montgomery Magazine's 2018 poetry contest. He lives in Silver Spring, MD, with his wife, Laurie.
