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Illustration: Émile Friant "Study for Les Amoureux / Soir d'automne" (Lovers / Autumn evening) 1888

Polemics by Jim McGarrah

Here’s a mistake I frequently make,

I say poems are made from words. 

But that is to say killing is an ordinary

task in war or all the tools for every job

come from Sears. Tonight, my poem

works as a bartender who, like an acrobat, 

leaps on a narrow shelf. Steadied

by one leg and a waitress 

with arms covered in pagan tattoos, 

he retrieves a bottle high

above the bar’s mirror breaking

neither neck nor sweat. Tonight

my poem is love as these two people

brush against each other and hesitate

till all that needs said is said in silence.

Leaves fall from trees constantly

without fearing death. The bartender

doesn’t know this. That’s why, 

drying glasses with a damp towel, he looks

away each time she returns for an order.

 Jim McGarrah's poems, essays, and stories have appeared in many literary magazines over the past decade. His play, Split Second Timing, received a Kennedy Center ACTF Award in 2001. He is the author of four books of poetry, Running the Voodoo Down (2003), When the Stars Go Dark (2009), Breakfast at Denny's (2013), and The Truth About Mangoes (2016), a critically acclaimed memoir of the Vietnam War entitled A Temporary Sort of Peace that won the 2010 Legacy Nonfiction Award from the Eric Hoffer Foundation and the sequel entitled The End of an Era. His nonfiction books, Off Track and Misdemeanor Outlaw, were published by Blue Heron Book Works of Allentown, PA. Jim is also co-editor of Home Again: Essays and Memoirs from Indiana and a founding editor of RopeWalk Press, as well as the former managing editor of Southern Indiana Review. 

Connect with Jim online: https://www.facebook.com/JimMcGarrah.author/