When we lost the Z
in our Scrabble set, we ruled any N
could be turned on its side. This suddenly made possible
blizzard, and buzzard. Someone played pizzazz.
Soon, every lost thing began to appear.
My mother used to tilt her head to the left to read emoticons
then placed them quizzically in the middle of sentences
like commas. She was always eloquent
about our fractured connection. After,
I found those emails where she puzzled at my distance.
Couldn’t those have stayed lost? Or
couldn’t I just not remember? Whatever happened
to my high school friend who shared his name
with his parents’ first child,
who died soon after being born? His father and mother
found their Jonathan again. Always, he bristles
at the crunch of snow, stepping onto the smothered grass
to approach the grave. He finds
his own headstone every time he visits his brother.
Amy Meckler
Amy Meckler’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Rattapallax, Margie, Lyric, Alyss, and Cider Press Review, among other publications. Her first collection, What All the Sleeping Is For, won the 2002 Defined Providence Press Poetry Book Award. She received her MFA from Hunter College and lives in New York City.
