Poetry By Timothy Gager

I remember
Autumn 1967

I met my Aunt, during a year I had redacted
She planted kisses on me, many times after
the incident, I smelt her fragrant lipstick
Felt waxy smudges on my cheeks

I just knew, she had forced
her way into my suffocation
while the rest of the family laughed at
the hugs and kisses for the vacant boy

squirming and flailing like someone
coming out of anesthesia,
or licking an electric outlet
which I swore would be a relief

I don’t want to re-experience
that flash to darkness
but back in that moment, I felt tiny,
and as useless as dust in a corner

while the big fat elephant in the room,
my father, howled with the rest of them
He had silenced my screams
years earlier, but no one knew

why I grew up so visceral,
imagining bashing all those faces,
all those lips bleeding,
1…2…3…4…5…99…100,000

you can’t edit time
I can

live with myself, a dead boy,
lucky to start breathing again
                 lucky I don’t need to
                           ever forget that




Fear, God Bless My Soul

your world flooded
disrupted, Dear God,
are we having a relapse
now?  Remember,
to have no resentments
toward mental states.

Just sit at home
as the hurricane roars
She is just a vessel
which love moves through
To meditate on her

feel it back till the windows
implode, just waiting
to lick the glass off
her, Dear God, I am afraid
like the gray cat,  a stray

I’m afraid, the water will rise up
to a lightbulb.  Your ideas.
I’m reaching for, like a bottle
of water I never used to want--
to die, I only thought I did.  

​
​
Timothy Gager is the author of fourteen books of short fiction and poetry. His latest Every Day There Is Something About Elephants (2018), a book of 108 flash fictions, was released by Big Table Publishing in 2018. He’s hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 2001 and was the co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival. He has had over 500 works of fiction and poetry published and of which thirteen have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio. Timothy is the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts and is employed as a social worker.