A Poem by Max Winter

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Ebenezer Makes a Prediction

The light goes on
The light goes off
A man sells a banana
A man sells a pear
The weather is fair today
Tomorrow it might not be so fair
You are singing
You are eating
You are disrobing
You are sleeping
The world is turning
The world is drying up
It is forgetting
It is remembering
There is a small beep
After the beep is silence
I am speaking
I am not speaking
I am raising
I am lowering
I am loving
I am not loving
I am not hating
I am described easily
I am evading description
A lie is told
A lie is recounted
In the retelling
a lie turns
into another lie
There is a crunch on the gravel
There is a sound in the wall
There is a cool spell after a hot spell
The opposite happens
The opposite of that happens
We notice
They don’t notice
It is understood
It is incomprehensible
It is blessed
It is doomed
We put on our little shoes
We buckle our collars
We go to work
There is no work
There is a problem with the bank
There is no problem with the bank
Everything is fine
Everything is terrible
I say it is
I say nothing
The boat enters the harbor
The boat sails north
The fog enters
The fog leaves
The horn sounds
The sound is scratchy
On the recording
We have remaining
But the sound is true
It is yes true
You cannot take it away
You have it in your hand

Max Winter is the author of Walking Among Them (Subpress, 2013) and The Pictures (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007). He co-edits the press Solid Objects.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.