Coronation

High winds, and the streetlights on all day, the foothills blazing with taillights,
with fires we cannot see. People still went shopping, got their oil changed, ate
out. Russia broke up like an iceberg adrift "somewhere in the North Atlantic."
Dear John, said Grozny, and scenes of the city appeared on billboards where
skeletal models tugged at their jeans as if they couldn't wait to love you. On the
news, the stadium under black smoke, then Bob the anchorman bantering with
the sports guy about the coming game, "Out of the frying pan into the fire,
huh?" I remember him apologizing "to the city" the next evening before he lost
his job. Bob, who'd never before blinked at the camera lights.

Ah, Bob, if only you knew what, thirty-five years later, that would mean to the
boy who wanted to be you. If only we knew what it would mean to us all, what
he'd say he learned that evening, watching you secretly from a friend's house, the
same blue eyes we'd know from the Podiums, unblinking, his small hands
perfectly still.

Alpay Ulku
The Gettysburg Review
Volume 18, Number 2
Summer 2005

Copyright © 2005 by The Gettysburg Review.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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