ISSUE 1 · FALL 2008
The Walk Away MARC JAMPOLE He walks away without a scratch upended car impressed against a tree transitioned from the flash of dream-world dead dissecting tires and piston trickle near his face and hands enflamed with fear of ceasing movement, frieze of jagged branch mosaic tumbles with his skidding tug of seatbelt round around around a crack in snake-skin windshield fallen, stiff, caressed by weeping blood is why he’s here is why he’s here, who cares whose turn it is to turn away and still to see the maul of dead, the scrum of auto parts in duck blind ducking hurtled arrows’ aching screams of stopping wake awake awake to stagnant cipher, toasted sweetness reek of drunken leaves and peat becomes a thing that neither touches nor is touched, eternity in an instant, an instant in eternity and then the real: he walks away, a different me in him, a me exhausted but inflexible, drained of mystery, stripped of all-impeding them and theirs.
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Marc Jampole is the author of Music from Words (2007, Bellday Books, Inc). His poetry has been published in Mississippi Review, Oxford Review, Janus Head, Main Street Rag, Ellipsis, Wilderness House Review and other journals. Four of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has written more than 450 articles for magazines and newspapers. Marc has worked professionally as a filmmaker, television news reporter, university instructor, options trader, advertising executive, and writer.