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"Let me tell you a secret:", "Encore: Ten definitions of nostalgia" & "Fire/light after the riot" by Daniel Seifert



Let me tell you a secret:


When I’m old with a mouth

like a gravestone party(all tilted teeth

and mossy gums)I’ll still know your face better

than hands know 

a house-key in the dark.


That face — something to carry in the palm, talismanic-smooth.A key* 

to unlock and relight a home

room by room,

entered and made warm

from footsteps and good thoughts alone.


*A key has many parts to love your fingers

over. A moon-round head. A blade running

to the tip that nuzzles the skin of your thumb.

A plain of notches and teeth that feel like

nibbled kisses beneath that round head,

that marvelous unlocker. That opener

of doors.


Encore: Ten definitions of nostalgia


To be lost in loss

and like it.


To construct a dollhouse youth

and call it a golden age.


Calling up each passing second, and with static

on your tongue, calling it an anniversary.


A feeling-delivery system that comes

in just one flavor.*


Silvery fish, a-gasp and slippysoft, pulled up from below.

Now thrashing in a boat (and you too scared to kill them).


A modern-day magic turning you into Houdini.

Slipping the rope of now.


Sheer stubbornness: the past refusing

to dilute.


Old shows, old photos. Shadows made to make

you feel younger.


That Grecian myth where the hero can get all he wants most,

as long as he doesn’t look back.

He looks back.


A most visited vice, a sin

that taps your shoulder and says: look back. Be lost in loss

and like it.


*Salty-sweet. A little sickly. Licked off of your fingers. Read that again. See if the feeling lingers.



Fire/light after the riot

Bonfire flames fuel double-decker fun / eating cars like snacks, crunching glass and / fire-light kissing tarmac into wax / beautiful in a way but the night is thin- / skinned alive, we're all / just / hanging / by a thread. You / know we are. So don't waste /


a single matchstick moment.

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