Nearly Zero (and countdown to release of "Chambers Street")

#Nearly Zero

(8 Days Remaining)

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I nearly left for Richmond on a Friday.
  I could already hear the door slamming shut;
  the lock clicking home one final time,
  the clack of my shoes on the airport tile
  and the smell of new tarmac asphalt at 5:05 am
  and why do flights never arrive or depart on the hour
  but rather five minutes before or after it?
  Are they superstitious of numbers that end in
    zero?
 

I almost left for Topeka on a Saturday.
  Why not, I reasoned, my bags are already packed.
  The lease runs out on Monday.
  I have a full tank of gas,
  and the one man in my life with enough courage to say "I do"
  changed his etch-a-sketch mind to "I don't".
  Game over.
  No take-backsies.
  Reset all counters to
    zero.

 

I could have left for Salt Lake on a Sunday.
  Hopped a train and never looked back.
  Wandered around this vagrant world
  like gypsy wishing-well dream people do.
  No destination neccessary
  just pick a direction and go.
  Anywhere.
  Everywhere.
  Counting the exits and the miles on the rails
  backwards as they inexoribly lead to
    zero.

 

I thought of leaving for Glasgow on a Monday.
  Something about the idea of returning to my roots
  seemed charmingly antebellum to me.
  In my steampunk vision,
  I would scribble my songs and my haikus
  on a laptop seated at a gnarled Ashwood table
  in the centre of a tiny cabin,
  while water for afternoon tea
  boils feverpitched and snarling on an
  iron stove with lion's paws for legs,
  which has to be started by match instead of electric ignition,
  and the cows and sheep in the neighbor's pasture
  would low me to sleep every night
  under a sky too filled with its own magnificence to mind
  that one lost girl beneath them
  screaming out wild and lonely epithets
  in a foreign language.
  Because Hollywood tells us that 1+1=3.
  But I know that 1+1 is
    zero.

 

I might have gone to Madrid on a Tuesday.
  Or Lisbon or Pasadena,
  or Lower Manhattan
  or purgatory,
  or...
  but I didn't go.

 

Because I am a goddamn
    coward.

 

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#Author’s Note:

In celebration of my upcoming debut poetry collection, “Chambers Street (and other small-heart poems)”, I will be posting excerpts from the poetry collection, one each day, to this subreddit, up until the release date, which is 9/20/18. That's 10 poems, one every single day for free, culminating in the long-anticipated release of “Chambers Street”.

The full list of poems that will be included is:

• Chambers Street

• The Calm Before

• Cobbe, Signet, Signet, Penn

• frak|tur

• A Word Like Wire

• Nearly Zero

• I Keep My Names

• The Day I Caught The Sun

• Acceptance

• Man of Châlons

• Silence is.

• When I Was Younger And You Were Not

• imagine the deep

• On Regret

• No Kings

• On Mortality, December 1980

• Also Known As

• 4 a.m. it slithers

• Excerpts From a Voicemail

• Every 29 Hours

• Oil

• Stars(through the whiskey-grey

• Last Light

• Rain Come Down

• How To Hold a Woman

• Kiss Me Like This

• This Is How I Brush My Hair

• A Slowspun Mymn

• Putting It Back Together

• And Then She Did It Anyway

• Today and Today and Today

Please enjoy these excerpted poems. Review them if you'd like to. All 10 of them will be included in the book, along with many many more. (The entire collection is 57 pages long, and represents over 10 years of work.) I hope you will consider purchasing a copy on Amazon or at your favorite brick-and-mortar book store. I'm told the price point will be under $10, so it should be very reasonable.

Thank you, OCPoetry, for coming with me on this incredible journey, and for supporting me and my work. I couldn't have done any of this without you.

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