Turning off Abednego Rd. I am returned
to them who have ceased, to three hundred
final breaths in car seats, hospital rooms,
double beds, recliners, a church pew or two.
The dead teach us nothing but subtraction,
and yet I have walked these rows since I first
knew walking, communing with them, respecting
their negativeness. At the plot where my aunt
rests, I speak into wild onions all those things
I did not say that last night, hoping to subtract
from myself. “Speak if I have said something
to offend,” I tell her, “Speak if I’ve said too much.”
Wind blows through maple branches, and negative
crowns move over her unmoving granite face.
SUBTRACTION by James A. Jordan | Sandalwood Vanilla Poetry Reed Diffuser
James A Jordan grew up on a small farm in rural Tennessee, and that place continues to inspire his writing. Over the last fifteen years he has moved all around the United States South and currently lives in Alabama. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several publications.
