Poetry by William R. Soldan

          William Clifford CC



Like Any Other

It’s a blur of years and detox beds and concrete cells and broken oaths and judgments.
Before that it’s night and he lies curled on a stranger’s couch, barely able to keep water down, in 
                the dark as interstate traffic paints the dingy walls with smears of light.
Before that he Pollocks the sticky tile floors of a Wendy’s single-serve shitter with his insides.
Before that he retches in a roadside ditch at dawn while some black-toothed hag changes a flat 
                tire and orders him in her rusty voice to watch for the cops.
Before that they’re driving, looking for someone he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care because 
                his body is pricked with warm rain, his head stuffed with beautiful cotton.
Before that they climb mountains of boxes and clothes in search of a place to worship and she 
                gives him a bottle of pink liquid to drink while she crushes little white pills and chokes 
                her bony arm with a knotted shoelace and shoots them in her wrist.
Before that it’s night and she’s saying, “Wanna take a ride?”
Before that he’s manning the kegs at a party picked at random, someone asking, “Who do 
                you know here?” and he’s saying “Dave” because chances are there’s a Dave, there’s 
                always a Dave.
Before that it’s the humming freeway to another city.
Before that it’s early on a Friday.
Before that he’s bored, just bored.
Before that he’s lonely kid, just like any other. 





Eulogy

for Jessica

“But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody’s noticing. He
simply went under. He died. I am still alive.”
                                                                                        —Denis Johnson, “Out on Bail”


An old friend told me of an old friend’s death, asked 
would I help make him remembered.
She’d sat alone at the viewing because no one had told the world 
he was no longer in it.

She said, I can’t let our son think
his father didn’t matter.

So I pored over Denis Johnson, because who else could say it right? 
But as I’ve said, he was an old friend, more a peer from schooldays,
so maybe I’m not the best to choose, though I’d try.

We’d gone down a similar road, I’d heard, 
a road that for all its nuance is the same road 
leading to the same dead end. 
That I am here and he is not is no miracle, but instead 
the toss and tumble of a different crapshoot. 
Snake eyes versus the lucky seven. 
All the strategy in the world and it’s gravity that 
has the final say.

I find myself here, remembering a man who was last a kid 
when I knew him, and turning toward myself, as we do, 
wondering what words will be unearthed when my time finally comes, 
as it will.

Is it possible not to become selfish like this in the face of our own mortality? 
To not come up empty and silent when at last there’s a need to speak? 
To not collide with that old fear of being forgotten because, 
even though there is evidence of your life in the scars you’ve left 
on so many hearts, there are no words?

Because really, there never are at times like this.
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William R. Soldan is a writer from Youngstown, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections In Just the Right Light and Lost in the Furrows, as well as the forthcoming poetry collection So Fast, So Close and two more books of fiction. His work has appeared widely in print and online publications, some of which can be found at williamrsoldan.com if you'd like to read more. He can also be found on Twitter @RustWriter1 if you'd like to connect.

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