Owl Vision 2018: Millennial memories
by Matthew G. Morley –
Millennial memories
Archives
There, everything was retained. Notable people,
professors and activists left their lives behind.
Each day, I held yellow letters never meant for me
to read – sometimes the edges of their pages frayed away
under the force of time. When the spine of a centuries-
old book broke, it whimpered, I’m scared.
And so I cradled the text, knowing the impermanence
of preservation, but offered reassurance. Sometimes
I whispered back: me too.
What will happen next
century? Or the century after that? These objects
may live to be held by a hundred pairs of hands,
yet their existence is simply an echo
among the stacks and stacks and stacks
of others like them. We are all scared.
Millennial Adulthood
I wake up somewhere in downtown Chicago – or,
that’s how it smells. A pencil’s in my hand, in the
other’s a notebook full of fragments of poems. No, I’m
full of fragments of poems; its are pages of nonstop
nonsense. I’m wearing grungy, ratty clothes. No shoes.
I dream of a mystical bed whereupon, after a rest, I
could return to childhood – or childishness, whichever
is easiest – but instead I wander into an office, take a
seat at an empty cubicle. Twiddle my thumbs. A year
later, I stand up and step away.
Silence introduces me to another version of myself,
who asks “this is it?” in rare hiatuses, like those that
exist between bars on a bass clef staff, or between the
stanzas of this poem; between an inhale and the buzz.
Between pressing a screen and the arrival of a car.
Between saying goodbye and actually departing.
Working at the tree farm between jobs – again
There’s no time to wait for a dream
job – or at least one with better pay.
Mr. H’s farm is about a mile from the town
high school – my college sweetheart’s
alma mater. Living here 11 months
has felt like 11 years, but I still don’t call
myself a New Yorker. (No, not the city). The first
time I was between jobs, I learned the tractor,
took a selfie as proof for my Illinois friends.
Sunburnt my skin, nicked my arms on dead,
browning brush, which I drunkenly bonfired
with my sweetheart and Mr. H’s daughter.
This time, I learned how to jiggle the ignition key,
where to kick the engine of the 360 mower
so that it would turn over. To arrive before
the rise of the Sun. To ask less
from the dearest oracle black cat
of returning home to Chicago.
To answer just once and avoid my friends’
follow-up question: Can you—