THE DARE is a new poem appearing in the first issue of the Perfume River Poetry Review. You can click on this link for a free PDF of the entire first issue, or order a print copy for $10.
I've included a copy of the poem below for a quick read:
The Dare
The correct word, he says, is death
that had happened to him. Perhaps
it had only been near, but his heart
had stopped, everything just stopped
on a dime. Lucky
to have been in a hospital already
where angels in white lab coats
and fabulous machines pulled his
twenty-one grams of weighted soul
back into his comatose body,
waking three days later to a world
fundamentally changed, though
he could not immediately say how.
No memory of the past month,
including the World Cup soccer match
he’d watched with his sons (who won?
was one of his first questions after
the coma). But no matter, here
was life, still, again—and the basic
questions could no longer be assumed.
What to have for breakfast. Whether
to move to India, minister to those
nearer death than he. Anything
possible now in a fundamental way:
breathing, swimming against the tide
of world politics, standing now
under this very sun in the parking lot
of Home Depot where immigrants
still linger awaiting work. Telling
this story. Each hour, he says, a luxury.
The problem being how to honor the passing minutes,
as though a king had staid your execution,
given you the keys to his kingdom,
dared you to be great.