Sean Colletti
Keatonesque
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane
– Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”
We wait below the white building’s wavering façade,
the wind at our backs hunching us over into tired lovers.
We always know where to stand. Always know how to
fall, but today we watch and let things fall around us for once.
The man with the megaphone shouts something,
but the turbine catches it and throws the words
counterclockwise, missing us all in spirals. Then,
it begins its calculated descent—the inevitable palm.
They will tell stories, but they will not tell ours—
the one where, for just a moment, we wore it
around our waist like a floatie. How snug it was.
The smirk unseen. How we almost forgot to run
and pretend like we were not so happy, so at peace.
Sean Colletti’s first chapbook, Saeculum (2018), was published by Bare Fiction (UK). He received his PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham (UK). He currently lives in Camarillo, California, primarily with his cat.
