
Rob had appeared before, in other lives, to other people.
He was no stranger to their feelings,
he was not far away from their minds.
He had emergencies sometimes, the disappearing
outsider, dressed as the case, black.
There was nothing anywhere, in the rain, outside, the wind,
neither nothing nor anything,
holding him back—he went when he had to:
Then, he came back:
Rob, as rich as the profit of organization, genius
and heredity. Nothing was too much God’s will
to prevent his departure
from the right way people always do things.
And, to save paperwork, it is recidivist.
. . .
Some other day I always wished you’d die.
I wanted to see you cease to be so good.
I didn’t want to see you be so good,
reminding me how others were worse and why
the way things are is never good
enough to justify an end.
You’re never going to die.
Robert Wooten's poetry currently appears in Main Street Rag, Dreams & Nightmares, Samsara, Lost Lake Folk Opera, Tar River Poetry, and Trajectory. He earned an MFA in poetry at the University of Alabama (1998) and an MA with a creative writing focus at North Carolina State University (1994).
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