by Marjorie Maddox

Frame by frame, this game:
fast forward, reverse; zoom in, retreat
to the panoramic, commentary astute, shrewd,
witty, and—my husband points out—spot on
with what I noted (the week the transplanted heart
of my father failed) at this exact tilt shot,
in the unsettling flashback of the soon-to-be
dead mother, who looks like me but isn’t,
memory its own voice over: fast-forward,
reverse and the brain reaches its same epiphanies,
the ah-ha’s cyclical and in sync with uncertain
certainties that loop between present and past,
past and future, which is what I’m tracking now
and then, the final close-up a mystery revealed
each time again, to my watching ears.

 

Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and 550+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. www.marjoriemaddox.com