STUART ROSS hat dieses Gedicht am 1. Jänner 2019 seinem Freundenskreis geschickt – ich darf es hier veröffentlichen. Thank you Stuart!

SUBTITLES

I wake up. A truck stutters by
on the road outside last year’s
window. Its rumble fades to a wisp.
This year I will make a grilled
cheese sandwich with tomato.
I make it. I put it on a plate.
The plate is cracked. The kitchen
light flickers. The phone almost
rings. Protestors chant outside
my door. I step out onto the porch,
lift a megaphone to my lips. Aloft
I hold the grilled cheese sandwich.
I request the protestors’ silence.
Their din curls into a tiny ball,
rolls down the street and off
the pier, drops into the happy lake.
I am about to speak, forming
words in my head like beseech and implore,
verisimilitude and providence, when
2019 reaches over the horizon,
hurling its vast shadow over us.
A song pops into my head. I record it.
It becomes the latest craze. Protestors
dance to it. Citizens plan their year
around it. It is called “Chekhov Said
If You Introduce a Grilled Cheese Sandwich
in Act One, You Must Shoot Someone
With It in Act Three.” But it is just a thing
I wrote. I didn’t mean anything by it.
I look for my little white dog
in the clouds but it’s like trying
to read subtitles against snow.
Did I tell you about the time
my mother hunched over my
fever-dampened brow? She
drew the blankets to my pale neck
and murmured to me,
You will spend the rest of your life
trying to remember
what I murmured to you.
 
Stuart Ross
1 January 2019