Divine Overdose
We are even more modern
we are free
not to know
pining pining
til the trees are in
their autumn beauty
who knows why
we are free
an LP of poetry
left on in the apartment
while I walk my love
to the subway
she turns to gold
in the light banking off
the ball-fields
and to have to think
of that small
pale body asleep
I return I take the stairs
3 at a time
and now my heart is sore
Copyright © 2016 by Matthew Rohrer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I fear that some of you will turn your heads away from this poem as from an unpleasant smell on the subway, when it is revealed to you that two lines are borrowed from Yeats’s ‘The Wild Swans at Coole.’ And I got the title from a student’s paper: his name is Divine and his assignment was called ‘Overdose’ and when I wrote that down as the subject heading, I liked it. The LP of poetry is the new Eileen Myles LP which I keep listening to.”
—Matthew Rohrer
Matthew Rohrer
Born in 1970, Matthew Rohrer is the author of several poetry collections, including Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007), and A Hummock in the Malookas, which was selected by Mary Oliver for the 1994 National Poetry Series.