“Memory” by Æ et al. (read by Yuugenshou)

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You’re listening to Poetry Month on The Voice of Dog.

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This is Rob MacWolf your fellow traveler,

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and Today we present a poem

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by Æ et al., a poet composed of several dragons in a trench coat.

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Read by Yuugenshou,

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wolf of wanderlust

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Please enjoy “Memory”,

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a poem by Æ et al.

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Memory is full of holes.

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A temple missing color

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interpreted through a modern lens.

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Unnecessary moments

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committed to the shredder

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treasures locked away

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for a rainy day. Or at least,

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I assume. My earliest

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are of not remembering

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the time I had a lisp

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being the pink Power Ranger for Halloween.

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No one remembers their early childhood,

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I heard so that was me, at four

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five six eleven

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thirteen. I want to write horror

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words to be remembered in nightmares

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birthing panic attacks on the train

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imagining bones broken and limbs tied.

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Write about childhood fears,

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the greats say but I don’t want to write about losing the house to the bank

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not getting into college

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being trapped in a small town forever.

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So I grab my shovel and dig.

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Mental permafrost halts my blade

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but I see glitter past the ice

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broken glass and shattered stone.

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The Geiger counter crackles to life

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this is not a place of honor

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no great deeds commemorated here.

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The beryllium shell breeches the surface

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a memory of not-remembering.

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A girl afraid of her father

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doing things she had no words for

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but only colors shapes

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impressions and roiling doubt.

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“Surely, if that happened to me, I would remember.

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No one would ever forget that!”

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There’s a line between the half-spheres

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promise of the plutonium within

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festering for decades a 20,000 year half-promise of venom

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for the waters of my soul.

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A quick twist of the shovel to pop it open

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release a brilliant flash of blue

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burning until only my shadow remains

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and in no shape to write a best-seller

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defeating the entire purpose of this expedition.

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I leave the demon core be the

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sleeping dragon’s tail untickled;

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I can write about them instead

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perhaps one with a treasure

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that can end the world

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locked away for a rainy day.

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This was “Memory” by Æ et al.,

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read for you by Yuugenshou,

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wolf of wanderlust.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog.