Lackawanna
My brain felt swiped clean.
I couldn’t love
songs I loved; friends came
nameless as mailmen …
A loaf of dough
forbidden to rise,
I’m slid into the hollow magnet.
Din of a dozen arcade games, but louder.
The MRI finds no sign
of stroke; the EEG, no fried circuitry.
Short-Term Temporal Lobe Seizure.
I’m told: forget it.
Forget my state of forgetfulness …
Was Dismal Harmony a childhood
wildlife preserve?—near tracks
where Lackawanna means
two streams meet and divide
in the tongue of an obliterated tribe.
From Listen (MadHat Press, 2020) by Steven Cramer. Copyright © 2020 by Steven Cramer. Used with the permission of the author.
Steven Cramer
Steven Cramer is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently Departures from Rilke (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). His previous book, Listen (MadHat Press, 2020), was named a “must-read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. His other previous books include Clangings (Sarabande Books, 2012) and Goodbye to the Orchard (Sarabande, 2004), winner of the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and a 2005 Massachusetts Honor Book.