Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry

Vikas K. Menon

Tell

If you knew the day you would die,
who would you tell and why?

There would be the tell
in my twitching eye,

you would wonder what I spoke
to grass and tree, yelled to the sky,

grunted at the night, drowned
in bourbon, beer and rye.

I would tell you, brother,
of the day, but not the time

and then we would return,
you and I, to the beginning—

to the clear shotglass of forgetting.

for Kenneth Farward (1956-2010)