M. A. Schaffner
Driving Blind
The customary precautions obtain
when harvesting retail clerks for dinner.
The average reader doesn’t anymore
but misses books like the former landscape
of northern Virginia and imagines
Yangtze dolphins in their final years,
the clear patches of river becoming
fewer and more elusive, the sounds and tastes
turning louder and fouler. In the end
one can only adapt so much and then
can’t remember why one would even try,
though the practice remains, itself a way
of living outside the luminous screen
and a windshield lit with reflected glare.
when harvesting retail clerks for dinner.
The average reader doesn’t anymore
but misses books like the former landscape
of northern Virginia and imagines
Yangtze dolphins in their final years,
the clear patches of river becoming
fewer and more elusive, the sounds and tastes
turning louder and fouler. In the end
one can only adapt so much and then
can’t remember why one would even try,
though the practice remains, itself a way
of living outside the luminous screen
and a windshield lit with reflected glare.
M. A. Schaffner has poetry recently published or forthcoming in Stand (UK), the Beloit Poetry Journal,The Hollins Critic, ARC (CA), and The North (UK). Other works include the collection, The Good Opinion of Squirrels (Word Works, 1997) and the novel, War Boys (Welcome Rain, 2002). When not writing Schaffner works as a civil servant in Washington.
Page(s) 33
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