A Catalog of Bright Oblivions

Furbies & Tomagatchi. Floppy disks & 8-tracks & videocassettes labeled in cursive. Cold hot plates like ribs in Ponderosa’s shuttered skeleton. Unopened Twinkies in my grandmother’s pantry & whatever lies above it in the landfill. The obols placed on the eyes of the dead. What my mother meant when she said, There are things I’ll never tell you. Love that never escapes the lips. Short Latin vowels in non-initial syllables. The Library of Alexandria & Homer’s Margites, who knew many things, but all badly. New England’s Dark Day, the smoke as thick as passenger pigeons. Dodos. Dugongs, soon. The purple dress I wore on the patio of the Flying Monkeys Saloon & the stranger who kissed me in it. The Rite-Aid where I bought it, which folded when COVID hit. The stranger who bought it from the Salvation Army after I donated it, and the strangers they might have kissed in it. Last night’s makeup still staining my pillowcase. There are things I’ll never tell you. Lady Jane Grey. Mayflies & daylilies & unmarked infant graves in the cemetery where Long Hwy meets M-50. SN 1006. My father’s gambling addiction & my brief manhood. The presidency of William Henry Harrison. The moral authority of Pastor Ted Haggard & the urge to call him a cockalorum. Taco Bell’s cheesy potato loaded grillers. Crayola’s raw umber. The music that lifted the fragments of the Tenth Muse. The eventual heat-death of the universe, its way of saying, There are things I’ll never tell you.

JOSHUA ZEITLER

Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Stanchion, Midway Journal, and elsewhere.