Stan Sanvel Rubin

HERE

 

When we wake, we are a morning of despair.
We comb our hair out with crumbs,
we suck sleep from long spoons
until dizziness takes us back to the dream
we walk through all day. If we head up,
we go down. If we go down, we go
all the way down, to basements we didn’t realize
and further.  We step on stairs made of bodies,
an escalator of ruin keeps us moving.
It is so hard to want anything we can use.
Everything we want hurts someone.
Everything we answer for is the wrong thing
and our answers mean nothing. Surely someone
will recognize our innocence, and love us.
 

“Here” is reprinted from There. Here.  (Lost Horse Press, 2013)

 
Stan Sanvel Rubin lives in Port Townsend. His fourth full-length collection, There. Here., has just been published by Lost Horse Press. His third, Hidden Sequel (2006), won the Barrow Street Book Prize and was a Small Press Distribution best seller. His poems are forthcoming in National Poetry Review, Cutthroat, The Florida Review, Great River Review and elsewhere. He writes essay reviews on poetry for Water-Stone Review. He’s the founding director of the Rainier Writing Workshop low residency MFA at Pacific Lutheran University.