These days the past seems more past
than it used to, in fact, it seems almost over.
Before now’s a lullaby, an echo
from when we thought we needed history.
It’s better this way. All those dusty books? We
burned them, unburdened ourselves from remembering.
There’s simply no time these days, what with
making our world from scratch every morning,
figuring out which berries are safe, which
snakes bite, which rock kills a neighbor
fastest. Each sunrise, we begin afresh,
finding the animals, renaming our children.
Memye Curtis Tucker is the author of The Watchers (Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, Ohio University Press); three chapbooks; and poems in Poetry Daily, the Georgia, Colorado, Oxford American and Southern Reviews, Prairie Schooner, and abroad. A MacDowell and VCCA Fellow and recipient of a PhD in English and numerous awards, she teaches advanced poetry writing and is a Senior Editor of Atlanta Review.
© 2015, Memye Curtis Tucker
Halfway Down the Stairs 