a poem

This is from Spork



Closed Parenthesis
by Richard Siken


Spring loves you most in blues and greens, I whisper from behind the screen. I throw my voice and suddenly you’re laughing. So here’s the open window where we pranced around and did our tricks and left these footprints in the snow, performing in this puppet show. We pull the strings and watch the curtain closing. The lights go dim, they’ve flickered out, the puppets sleep inside the trunk while, slowly now, the theater’s dismantled. That’s how it goes. And now we find it’s time to say farewell, wish you the best, a bon voyage of sorts, a flowersting, the little kiss that takes us to the end. And here we are, the end, last page, and only one thing left to say, with love: goodnight