The Kind of Life You Always Wanted
- The Kind of Life You Always Wanted
You have finished what you set out to, given up on desire, preferring the silent commerceof unwinding wire from a spool,
and you have invited sadness, like a child hidingunderneath a boathouse,
called catastrophe a horsethat waited for you to ride him, too tired to pull at his mane.
Who’s brought you to this far off country? What strangershave gathered in your house to see you off?Who’s forgotten to wear one’s best, wingtip shoes?
(You have). This kind of life has its rewards: little [End Page 111] is recorded, little is remembered long.
It finds you on foot, looking familiar, wearing a new suit,apologetic with a pocketful of sweaty money.
It pops open your trunk, when you’re drunk and shirtless in the moonlight,
claps twice, then scoops flocks of red-and-gray fan-tailed warblersinto the smoke, into night, until you swear to him you’ve done as you were told. [End Page 112]
Born in the Adirondacks, Justin Boening is the author of Self-Portrait as Missing Person, which was selected by Dara Wier for the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Fellowship. His poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals, such as the Atlas Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, and Lana Turner. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Boening currently lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is Bucknell’s 2013–14 Stadler Fellow.
