memoryslandscape

“Coldness without blankets. Coldness and dreams of coldness moving in and out of my thinly covered life the clock filling the room a drop at a time and when I woke up to the yellow of street lights and the gray of midnight I wanted to feel a certain way about friendships, I wanted to feel that I was getting older and that they are meaning more to me, but with the swiftness of a year slipping by, I have returned to that thin slot of my life,”

— Joshua Beckman, from section 9 of “Purple Heart Highway,” Things Are Happening (American Poetry Review, 1998)