Poets on the Porch preview: Dan Maguire

As Fox Chase gears up for its second annual Poets on the Porch event at Ryerss Museum and Library, six of the seven poets slated to read at the event have shared some of their work with us. You can see them perform other works at Ryerss on Aug. 20 at Ryerss at 1 p.m.

Reprise “Hieronymo’s mad againe.” —T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land” By Dan Maguire

Over and over you hear her combing the world through her hair, muttering the long day’s shimmer, everyone else condemned, subsiding separately, in waiting.

She leads you past the scattered flowers and bones, to where the pikes are set into the ground, a hundred yards from heaven. Avert your eyes. Ignore the crows. First this she says, then that.

So you pretend you cannot feel the chafe of chains, the all-seeing push of silence. Forget the pinch of borrowed shoes, the clutch of bartered earth. She will remind you. You will remember.

Let the phone ring. Don’t stand by the window. All is moving fast, away from you. Legs lost, names broken, sift through your box of chances. Outside, toothless limping history is going door to door, someone’s picture in its hand.

First published in The Fox Chase Review