Success Plummeting to the floor, a switchblade might resemble an Olympic diver, who enters the water as seamlessly as a pocketknife cutting into a piece of satin. There is much to be said in favor of competition, the results of which could be as arbitrary as a Powerball number. There is also much to say in favor of success. We could equate it with precision, like that of the switch- blade’s edge. It is an act of exactitude. Consider balancing on a razor or walking along a tightrope: it requires the perfection of a vertex like those in Euclidean geometry. So let us delight. Let us delight in the symmetry of the rhombus to remind ourselves that the virtuosity of our violinist, who runs through the chromatic scale, is proof of success.
Failure You’d never held a gun before, the percussion ricocheting throughout the bones in your skull. And the sag of your smile, the dismay, as you realize you will never attain that level of proficiency. Even a single bull’s- eye would astonish you. But never mind all of that. Return to your tenement, lean back in your recliner, stare at the water stain spreading on your ceiling, and see the constellation materializing in the sky.
In the Realm of the Devas The devas are discontent, we must not say otherwise. They are replete with desire and riddled with agitation, just as I’m agitated when the woman in Apartment 309 offers me money to stroke my hair. As the years sweep by in the crescent above the devas, the taste of ambrosia and the flute’s delicate partita deafens them to their impending rebirth. Their existence is as fragile as the wine bottles I take out of the dumpster in the parking lot and smash with a sledgehammer. These devas are not worthy of reverence. They are sick of the Buddha, that goodfellow Siddhartha Gautama, who never stops meditating, sitting there in a lotus position oblivious to the monks and postulants who, kneeling in front of him, desire dance and drink. The devas care little for the Buddha’s marble calm, viewing it instead as aloofness like that of the homeless man’s at the corner of Fourth and Main — the one that stands outside of Market Liquors — who daily tells me that I have a weird way of walking. One night the devas will transcend heavenly pleasures. One night, when their desires have evaporated like a puddle, and the full moon’s luminosity ripples across the reflecting pool, they will finally shed their forms and develop a mind that shines as effulgent as the polished floors of the meditation hall. They will leave this monastery, traverse the mountains, and rise into the faint streaks of ochre in the pre-dawn sky. — For (and after) Brigit Pegeen Kelly (1951-2016)
Streetlight The Atlantic sun streams through the tree branches, rays staining the ground a mild gold. The day grows old; slowly, the light disbands, unloosing a blackness. I have seen this scene many times before. I have meandered from streetlight to streetlight, wandering around with no one in sight. The only thing I meet is my shadow, a silhouette clinging to the ground, soon to be swallowed by night.
On that Night
When you were first asked what you were doing on that night, you replied you weren’t totally conscious. The officer smashed his hands on the steel table. It rattled on the cold concrete floor. The interrogation room had a single light, flickering like the last thoughts of a dying man. You stared at the officer as the handcuffs dug into the tender skin of your wrists. The light flickered. And you still can’t claw into the recesses of your psyche and recollect what you were doing when the woman’s corpse was found in the thickets of the forest off Mooretown Road. The officer said two shots of weak vodka affected a trucker’s driving, so he pulled over and found the woman’s body in the briars. That was two days ago, and now all you can say is I don’t remember what I was doing on that night.
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Alexander Lazarus Wolff is a student at the College of William & Mary. His work has been published or is forthcoming in “The Best American Poetry” website, “The Citron Review,” “Black Fox Literary Magazine,” “South Florida Poetry Journal,” “Main Street Rag,” “Serotonin,” and elsewhere. You can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/ and on Instagram @wolffalex108
