appealing

The Maynard
Fall 2017

Brian Jerrold Koester
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New York

Nobody bothers to know
which lampposts are alive
with enough juice to kill.
I used to feel lampposts.
Today in a marble fortress
relics of Truman Capote
repose in a glass casket—
no manuscripts
but a cheap notebook
he carried everywhere for months,
not-so-secretly
writing names in and crossing names out,
choosing the elect
for the party of the twentieth century.
Both of us raised in wicker baskets,
both of us ravaged by memory unwrapped,
I used to feel kinship
with Truman the suicide.
Now he reminds me
why I moved away.