How It Is to Go On as One of the Not Chosen

As kreep-slats for the lambs
that are chosen,
as the steel race built
for breeding, keep me
like that. Of constant use
and function, alive
for the simple things
that they might have witness,
like pigeons brothering the air,
crickets in the noon wheat
and the darkness,
the apples we eat, the lips
we crush, the salt laced upon the body
against the black dirt
of a ditch bank, the steady
ruin of the bright magnolia.
Make me something more
than what I am as I wait for you
past bright, past beautiful,
the leaves beginning to turn,
and horrible night here in this place—
the residence I have of me,
the fine house
I could’ve been.

Kevin Goodan
How It Is to Go On as One of the Not Chosen is reprinted from In The Ghost-House Acquainted (Alice James Books, 2004).