-Robert Barry

SURVEILLANCE

I liked the people at the next table.

Convenience store transactions make me less and less uncomfortable.

There are good reasons why that woman is on a billboard.

The air conditioning promotes lucid work.

You can reach me on my cell phone.

That the professor is a trifle stern only enhances the power of his words of praise.

What sounds like arguing in the next room is actually television.

I rarely question my own patriotism.

Grumpiness is a distraction.

The President’s intentions are basically good.

I am better now, thank you.

She wore a hectic shawl, but her voice soothed me.

Agents are working all the time, and you are safer for it.

I enjoy deleting spam emails advertising penis-enlargers.

I would fight if drafted.

We are thankful that he went quietly.

At work, it is possible to see bodies, but not to touch them.

Trucks keep America moving.

I am rarely home, but try me anyway.

Her Parties all astir -

A Presence of Departed Acts -

At window – and at Door -

-Emily Dickinson, No. 781 (Franklin), (1863)

WHAT HAPPENED

She wasn’t sure if her joke went over, or if it was in fact a joke, though she had meant it as one, when she turned to him and…

“So falls the youth; his arms the fall resound,” read the fine print on Bible paper in the compact blue book, the smallest Greg could find in the tent the afternoon he…

For a while I have been meaning to write you, turning over these things that have happened, things that ten years ago I wouldn’t have hesitated to call “events,” but which now…

Then he was gone, and what came to replace him was simply the air of that May evening, calming us where we sat on the patio, speaking of nothing in particular with a certain unease, a certain…

It was one of those whispers you only partly overhear, unsure if it is part of a campaign, bristling with insistent use of the words “now,” “quick,” “no,” and “tonight,” but otherwise as undecipherable as the static coming from…

We met on the Internet, but all through the date I couldn’t shake the sinister sense that we were related, that he was, perhaps…

For weeks I have thought of the drive home from work as a time for meditation in which I empty my mind and allow my eyes to focus on the colorful detailing of the suburban homes and the lush vegetation planted around them, and I begin to feel I am listening to the thoughts of the dwellers within, I alone…

“I come from a competitive family that hates foreigners, so it’s kind of strange that I joined the Peace Corps—I guess that just makes me the black sheep, or at least the one that…

As we sat in the hospital, the fact that we had both seen the other bleed made our shared silences somehow spacious, if you know what I’m trying…

–W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)

READ ONLY MEMORY

Life after the rupture

being a constant attempt

to return to quotidian games

watched by a guarded sense

ever since that day that

there is no resistance

no sea or air to swim against

though swimming

be allowed and encouraged.

People have fallen

stories and stories framed

in words bleached

at the edge

by electric light,

and again to no one we say

“Do not knock”

and make of our beds

a place to land.

Yet of other stories we remember

we were there

before

before

(I met you)

(in the meadow)

(and then there were letters)

(later we wrote and read)

before.

Set in my character

to remind you of a man

you never knew

star or wannabe

with enough patience

for a fat land

for summer days

you shut your eyes to

the warning skies.

All that time where was I

locked in anger

a wrestling helmet

that throbbed

invisible to all

another child in a waiting room

it matters

as men who kill call

themselves sad and disappear

into new countries.

This is hard to read through the screen

through the music coming from the computer

through the smell of exhaust and barbecue

through the wind chimes

through the rustling of the leaves

through the weight of my hands on the desk

through the turning of the afternoon

through the illusion of sameness of calm

through the unseen unheard fighting.

There never was a first word

never a first regret voiced over a grave

I was going to tell you

I was on my way

but am distracted

by most of the ways leading here

which is to say “the end

of the furthest branch”

where we are watched and it is quiet.