BJ Soloy: We All Pose
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Alice Bolin, in the West, Performs a Table Reading
Dad walked into the living room, struck this pose,
& said simply, “The World has changed.”
The Great Blue Whale’s heart is a Ford Taurus.
The world did not change. Dad did
not change. I finally breathed & my breath
blew out the same holes as before the world
had not changed. I coughed & coughed.
The Great Blue Whale’s heart a Ford Taurus
& all this breathing billions of krill.
Dad died & maybe the world did not
change. Maybe the world did a little
spin, but it always does, suffused
with new species, new specials,
new sales! Dad walks into the room,
the room glows, the room a room.
Dad is dead. Dad is not dead. We all pose.
BJ Soloy is the author of Our Pornography and other disaster songs, winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize, and Selected Letters, out with New Michigan Press. He lives and teaches in Kansas City, MO.
