Poem of the Month
When the screen goes dark

By David Solway

Published on February 1, 2013

When the screen goes dark
and the olives and carobs
in their intricate design
vanish into the sudden night
that falls like a butcher’s cleaver
in the stalls of the marketplace,
when the power goes
and the message I haven’t yet sent
for fear of your reply
is erased
as if wiped from the slate
when the lesson is done,
when a world ends,
even a little simulated world,
with a quick electric click
and an echoing clap of silence,
I grow virtual and disappear
like the Prophet in a movie scene
who cannot be represented,
like a user deprived of his apparatus,
like a man whose love has abandoned him.

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