Quickly Aging Here

Quickly Aging Here


by Denis Johnson

1


nothing to drink in
the refrigerator but juice from
the pickles come back
long dead, or thin
catsup. i feel i am old


now, though surely i
am young enough? i feel that i have had
winters, too many heaped cold


and dry as reptiles into my slack skin.
i am not the kind to win
and win.
no i am not that kind, i can hear


my wife yelling, “goddamnit, quit
running over,” talking to
the stove, yelling, “i
mean it, just stop,” and i am old and



2


i wonder about everything: birds
clamber south, your car
kaputs in a blazing, dusty
nowhere, things happen, and constantly you


wish for your slight home, for
your wife’s rusted
voice slamming around the kitchen. so few


of us wonder why
we crowded, as strange,
monstrous bodies, blindly into one
another till the bed


choked, and our range
of impossible maneuvers was gone,
but isn’t it because by dissolving like so
much dust into the sheets we are crowding


south, into the kitchen, into
nowhere?


Denis Johnson, “Quickly Aging Here” from The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New.
Posted over on Poetry Foundation