"Juanito Laguna yendo a la fábrica", Antonio Berni, 1977.
The Orphans
This morning air, not as it seems,
elsewhere churning, a false
tranquility.
Loons gather on vanished ponds,
ponds that mirror vanished clouds.
All migrations lead to an empty space
in a sky migrating through itself.
Each new arrival, a belated emergency.
Enter the orphans
carrying their sacks of bedding.
They stand in the road,
wondering where to go.
The naked trees point in all directions.
Their leaves blanket the ground.
One more layer of truth, of soft decay.
Some choices are not choices at all.
Here is where the children
must make their beds.
Paul Jaskunas
Paul Jaskunas is the author of two works of fiction: The Atlas of Remedies (Stillhouse Press) and Hidden (Free Press), which won the Friends of American Writers Award. Mother Ship, a chapbook of his poems, is forthcoming this fall (Finishing Line), as is Drawing Lessons, a volume of ekphrastic poems in conversation with the art of Warren Linn (Spuyten Duyvil). Since 2008, he has served on the faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he edits the art journal Full Bleed.
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