The Other Self Goes Rogue
- The Other Self Goes Rogue
Distance and inward, light andthe reversal of light, retreadtread and footfall. So much and so long,the little voice within the little voicesays. We allhide somewhere, why not in ourselves?
Existence is nothing morethan experience divided by endurance.If it can be sliced, it can be survived.
Think of me as the broken you—the part of you you know needsmore than a splint and a bandage.I am the fracture, the busted bone you refuse to lose.
I am that rhyme [there even whenI'm not], and you are theintake after rhyme: silence, echo, wave inthe wave of waves.
If sorrow was a cup of pudding,if sorrow was the spike of lighton the little pond, if sorrow was the pondand you were the spike of waves, the little light in the silent rhyme . . .
If life were a sling, it wouldstill break your arm. If your armwas forgiveness, I'd break it again. [End Page 55]
Believe me when I tell youthat there is nothing beyondthese words, that wall, your name—
Here, stick your arm through the bar,I want to sign your cast. [End Page 56]
Dean Rader has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days (Truman State University Press, 2010), won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, judged by Claudia Keelan. It was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial Award for a First Book of Poems, and it won the 2010 Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize. In 2011 he was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Louis Hammer Award, judged by David Lehman, and in 2012 one of his poems was selected by Mark Doty for Best American Poetry, 2012. Rader is currently a professor of English at the University of San Francisco, where he won the 2010-11 Distinguished Research Award.
