Settling In
____________________________________

Vague traffic sounds outside the window.
A light snow falling. Waking a little.
Slipping off again. The distinctions

between things blurring not to the point
of being indistinguishable, but softening
the parts of myself normally barred

from each other. More than where
public and private selves merge,
here is where the selves I might

become are cast on
those I’ve been. Here is where
one learns to lay claim to nothing.

I wake, my not-yet-self
projecting back on the life I rise into.

 

From A Million in Prizes by Justin Marks, 2009

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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