I Want to Call Everything Marlene by Donald Zirilli

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I Want to Call Everything Marlene

because there is no Marlene
and I’ll be talking to her on the darkest, rainiest days 
because whatever it is, 
however amorphous or unrecognizable,
no matter what is in my eyes, it will be called Marlene.

What fools we are for not running like mad while we have legs
only because we haven’t called the road Marlene,
or because there was one mailbox we forgot to write it on.

Nobody else will call the hedge Marlene, 
or the shadow of the hedge, where a cat might be hiding. 
Nobody else will use that name on the flickering pickets of fence. 
The silence of driveways and moonclouds
is reason enough.

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Donald Zirilli is a Healthcare IT manager with an English Literature BA from Drew University. He was the editor of Now Culture, the art editor of The Shit Creek Review, and remains a Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Gang Member. His poetry was published in The 2River View, Anti- poetry magazine, ART TIMES, Nerve Lantern, River Styx, and other periodicals and anthologies. He and his wife live in an idyllic corner of New Jersey with two dogs and two cats. His chapbook, Heaven’s Not For You, was published in September, 2018, by Kelsay Books.

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