Jeffery Bahr

 

Why I Won't Say I Love You

 

One boy flips another. In the handclap

of the sensei resides the whole boy and the broken

boy. Trace the grains on the dojo floor: a thought

collapses plight into calliopes. My father

 

kept his pencils sharp and pointed

to the light. I avoid hospitals and drive

without my glasses. I have a cat

that shuns the easy

 

ingress. She’s smarter than me,

balanced on three legs, one

for sacrifice. I right the fallen

centerpiece: two lilies, a bud cut

 

for luck, like the boy, who

between breaths, is every possible thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jeffery Bahr, (MMM Contributing Editor) runs a software development firm in Longmont. He has been the managing editor of The Alsop Review and QED online poetry sites, and a poetry editor for a number of online literary journal issues. His work has been published in The Iowa Review, Black Warrior, Pleiades, Verse, Indiana Review, Chelsea, Many Mountains Moving, and many others.